Television Review: CHRISTMAS AT PEE WEE'S PLAYHOUSE (1988, Wayne Orr & Paul Reubens)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 49 minutes.
Tag-line: None.

Notable Cast or Crew: Paul Reubens (PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER), Annette Funicello (BABES IN TOYLAND, BEACH PARTY), Frankie Avalon (GREASE, DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE), Grace Jones (A VIEW TO A KILL, VAMP), k.d. lang, Dinah Shore, Little Richard, Cher, Magic Johnson, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Whoopi Goldberg (FATAL BEAUTY, THE CELEBRITY GUIDE TO WINE), Oprah Winfrey, Joan Rivers,  Charo, Laurence Fishburne (APOCALYPSE NOW, BOYZ N THE HOOD), Chairry, Floory, Globey, Conky 2000, Clockey, Magic Screen, Pterri, Mr. Window, Dirty Dog, Cool Cat, Chicky Baby, Randy, Billy Baloney, the Dinosaur Family, and The Flowers.

Best One-liner:  "That was Cher!  Cher was right over there!  In the same room as my chair!  I hope I didn't stare!  Oh well!  I don't care!"
Secret Word: "Year."

Now this was an 11th Hour Christmas Eve recommendation from my sister, who let me know it was streaming on Netflix.  And holy cow, what an embarrassment of festive, camp-tastic riches!  Occasionally subversive for a children's program, it uses its substantial powers to celebrate diversity and kitsch in something approaching equal quantities.  It's madness down the line, but for the moment, let me regale you with the top seven most amazingly absurd moments in CHRISTMAS AT PEE-WEE'S PLAYHOUSE:

#7.  The opening tableau, which involves sequined back-up singers and the UCLA Glee Club men's choir dressed as U.S. Marines in dress blues
 
cavorting in the background and ultimately hoisting Pee Wee into the camera lens where he caterwauls impressively.

#6.  L.A. Laker Magic Johnson shows up inside the Magic Screen


because Magic Johnson is cousins with the Magic Screen.  Later, they are chased by a cartoon polar bear:


#5.  Pee Wee forces Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon into a form of slave labor, the arts n' craftsy task at hand being to construct his Christmas cards.



Later, for all their efforts, he serves them bread and water.


#4.  Whoa-oh-oh!  Cher drops by to mess around with Conky and determine the Word of the Day, which is "YEAR."

Pee Wee then proceeds to make a variety of Cher-related puns.


This represents the content and flavor of the entire show condensed into a single freeze frame.

#3.  Little Richard minces in, flustered by his own inability to ice skate.

Pee Wee then delights Little Richard with a deft display of ice-skating.



However, the use of stunt double "Hans" saddens Little Richard, who pouts in disappointment.


#2.  There is an ongoing gag about Pee Wee receiving unwanted fruitcakes.  Naturally, he sets two beefcake-y construction workers to building him a tower out of them.


 Literally a tower of fruitcakes.

#1.  A crate is delivered by mistake to Pee Wee.

It is intended for then-lame duck President Ronald Reagan.

The crate contains Grace Jones, who is wearing a bizarro foam outfit with sculpted breast-molds, because of course she is.

Pee Wee attempts to repackage Grace Jones,


 but she insists on singing "The Little Drummer Boy" while she strips off her fur and gloves as if proceeding into a burlesque number

while Pee Wee himself sits on a tiny chair in childlike euphoria throughout.

Unfortunately, no one has ever accidentally delivered Grace Jones to my house.

I feel as if I have only scratched the surface here (I didn't even get to Charo, Whoopi, Oprah, or Laurence Fishburne!), and invite you, too, to visit this, which may very well be the most willfully insane of all the 80s Christmas specials.  (You'll note that the STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL is from the 70s.)  Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and here's to a tremendous New Year!

That's the secret word!  AHHHHHHHHHH!

–Sean Gill

Only now does it occur to me... LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER BASED ON THE ARTICLE "A BUTLER WELL SERVED BY THIS ELECTION" BY WIL HAYGOOD

Only now does it occur to me...  that while John Cusack may not have actually delivered the worst Richard Nixon performance in history, he was probably the most miscast.  Let's take a look at some other cinematic Nixons:

Anthony Hopkins in NIXON.  Probably the best-known cinematic Nixon, and certainly a very well-acted one, but on the whole he's a little miscast and the movie's a touch bloated, I'd say.


Philip Baker Hall in SECRET HONOR.  Probably the most intense Nixon of the bunch, and in a one-man show, to boot.  There's a real intimate, terrifying artistry to his work.

Dan Hedaya in DICK.  My personal favorite.  I would go so far as to say that DICK is a severely underrated movie and one of the smartest comedies of the 90s.  People had been saying for years that Hedaya would make a great Nixon, and of course he did.  I mean, his eyebrows alone are better than Cusack.

 

And who could forget Frank Langella in FROST/NIXON? Oops!  That's the wrong picture.  That's Langella as "Skeletor" in MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.  Here's the right one:

 

Another great performance that plays up the more condescending elements of Nixon's persona, the parts of him who always believed he was the smartest man in the room– invulnerable, even when the cold, hard truths were speaking otherwise.

Which leads us back to Cusack.  Who's not even trying.  They put a l'il Nixon nose on him– let's give them that– but that's all they did.  What we're looking at here is still John Cusack, doing a classic awkward Cusack mini-grin... while wearing a l'il Nixon nose.
You know what?  I'm prepared to revise my initial statement:  yes, this is the worst Nixon performance in film history, even worse than Buck McDancer in HOT SHOTS! PART DEUX.

The best thing we can take away from this is the new understanding that Cusack must have thought THE PAPERBOY BASED ON THE NOVEL "THE PAPERBOY" BY PETE DEXTER was actually a brilliant movie, hence his decision to work with Lee Daniels a second time.  (Or maybe it was just the money.)

There's plenty of other strange casting, too–
Why they cast Robin Williams as Eisenhower in a world where J.K. Simmons exists is sort of a head-scratcher:

Alan Rickman always brings some wonderful dickery to his roles, but he's still not quite right for Ronald Reagan:

And Mariah Carey gets her airbrushed face smudged with a little dirt for her role as a poor, 1920s sharecropper (though Lee Daniels employs a similar technique as Susan Seidelman did with Madonna in DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN– he keeps the part brief, and mostly non-speaking):

Whew.  Okay.  Three more observations:

#1.  Love the matching figure skater/SOUL TRAIN costumes on Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey in this authentic 1970s tableau:

and I think the movie would have been better served if these outfits had rated more screen time.

#2. It's sort of amusing that Oprah has become so accustomed to award shows, state dinners, and the VIP treatment that she can no longer muster the excitement of attending one for the first time, even when her role demands it:

Unremitting ennui: the price of success

#3.  And finally, the venerable Clarence Williams III– in a bit part that amounts to basically "the Obi-Wan Kenobi of butlers"– might be the only person who walks away from this thing completely unscathed.

Though I still like him best when he's terrifying and teamed with John Glover.

In closing, LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER BASED ON THE ARTICLE "A BUTLER WELL SERVED BY THIS ELECTION" BY WIL HAYGOOD is no THE PAPERBOY BASED ON THE NOVEL "THE PAPERBOY" BY PETE DEXTER; it's not a hotbed of unintentional comedy or a purveyor of Southern Fried Sleaze-o-Rama, it doesn't induce any spit-takes, grand guffaws, or jellyfish-related urination.  No, it's just a mediocre Oscar grubber that's not too great, but not too bad, either.  It's about as deep as NBC's THE SIXTIES or FORREST GUMP or ACROSS THE UNIVERSE and for some, hell, that's deep enough.

–Sean Gill