SummaryPee-wee Herman is now a small-town farmer with a fiancée, but when a traveling circus comes to town, he finds himself falling for the trapeze artist.
Directed By:Randal Kleiser
Written By:Paul Reubens, George McGrath
Big Top Pee-wee
Metascore
Mixed or Average
42
User score
Mixed or Average
5.3
My Score
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Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
42
0% Positive
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
83% Mixed
15 Reviews
15 Reviews
17% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
60
When flights of fancy like this work, and they do for about half of this newest Pee-wee Herman adventure, you have a world seductive enough to snare adults right alongside their kids. With his co-writer George McGrath and director Randal Kleiser, Paul Reubens (Pee-wee's alter ego) has kept the magic going far longer than you might have believed possible. [22 Jul 1988, p.1]
60
Isn't in the same class as Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, but still provides plenty of prize pickings for kids, kooks and academics.
50
Even with sex, Big Top Pee-wee seems dry and juiceless. [22 Jul 1988, p.C7]
50
While the level of imagination here is scaled to the bite-size dimensions of TV, the sense of an alternate universe felt in Herman's TV show is woefully lacking. But fans and undemanding kids may still be amused.
40
Though sprinkled with comic gems, Big Top Pee-wee runs out of gas in the home stretch. Kleiser, of Blue Lagoon fame, is too bland for the job -- the tame Big Top finale makes you yearn for the cartoonish pizzazz of Big Adventure director Tim Burton. [01 Aug 1988, p.54]
40
Kleiser has no feel for comedy, and there's no affinity between him and his star. He shoots the material as if he didn't quite get it, and the gags dribble out weakly, without any emphasis or piquancy, as if the camera itself were perplexed by the scene unfolding in front of it.
30
An uninspired circus film for children.
User score
Mixed or Average
5.3
43% Positive
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
43% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
14% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
Aug 19, 2020
0
Absolutely terrible and no where near the quality and humor of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Within 10 minutes you’ve gotten into Big Adventure, gone through Pee Wee’s hilarious daily routine and then you’re already about into the plot. In Big Top 10 minutes doesn’t even get you to the horrible date scene where Pee Wee eats horrible egg salad from one of the most wooden actresses. It takes 20 minutes to get to the horrid scene where Pee Wee has to go get a cheese sandwich served up by a crusty old man who makes Ebeneezer Scrooge seem like a sweetheart, served with a scowl and not even cooked. A couple of old crones couldn’t be kind enough to allow the poor guy to go ahead of them being they weren’t even ready to buy the fabric they were looking at. Then about 25 or 30 minutes in the tornado that gets the ludicrous circus themed plot going farts on in to this **** show. I quit watching about 30 minutes in because it was painfully boring and unfunny. Skip this embarrassment in Pee Wee’s otherwise funny line up.
