Will Pee-Wee's Big Holiday Make New Fans?

When Paul Reubens' Pee-Wee Herman character was at the peak of its popularity in the 1980s, Reubens had a firm grip on offbeat culture. Pee-Wee's Playhouse was a hit kids' show, and Tim Burton's 1985 Pee-wee's Big Adventure feature film quickly became a favorite for irony-loving, quirky adult movie fans. It's been nearly three decades since Pee-Wee last had a film vehicle to himself, however, and his new feature film on Netflix raises the question of whether the character has anything to offer 2016 audiences other than nostalgia.

Produced by Judd Apatow and written by Paul Rust, a pair who just performed the same duties on the Netflix original Love, Pee-wee's Big Holiday is an obvious attempt to recreate the appeal of the 1985 film. In it, the hopelessly naive and odd Pee-Wee is motivated to leave his comfortable small-town life by a series of mishaps that get him mixed up in a chain of oddball situations with lovably weird characters, including a trio of female bank robbers.

Even though 63-year-old Reubens has to stretch to play the man-child character now, Pee-Wee's Big Holiday will give devoted fans everything they remember from the old days. Pee-Wee still mugs and screams, and director John Lee's technique is a toned-down version of Burton's over-the-top surreal style.

But will viewers born decades after Pee-Wee was last on screen give the character new life? That's a harder question to answer. In the 1980s, hipster irony was a brand new notion, but these days there's nothing novel about an absurd character like Pee-Wee. In 2016, the hunger for a character who upends traditional expectations with a wink and a cackle is likely a bit less pronounced than it was 30 years ago. Or maybe it isn't. Only Netflix knows for sure.