'Pee-wee as Himself' review: Fascinating, incomplete, portrait of a man of mystery

WHAT IT'S ABOUT This two-part film, which premiered at this year's Sundance, was a collaboration between veteran filmmaker Matt Wolf ("Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project") and Paul Reubens — Pee-wee Herman — who agreed to let Wolf interview him over 40 hours. Reubens also neglected to tell the filmmaker that he was dying. (Reubens died July 30, 2023, at the age of 70 from leukemia and metastatic lung cancer.)

Paul Reubenfeld — his father Milton was a top gun aviator during World War II and later helped form the Israeli air force — was raised in Florida, and later joined the Groundlings in L.A. where he developed Pee-wee and other characters. A cult HBO hit followed, then the first movie (1985's "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," directed by Tim Burton.) After the five-year run of his CBS kids' show "Pee-wee's Playhouse" wrapped in 1990, Reubens was arrested at an adult theater in Sarasota, Florida, in 1991. His career went into a deep freeze over the next decade, only to revive — spectacularly — in the next.

MY SAY Late in this film, Reubens tells Wolf "I'm not a trusting person," then pointedly adds he doesn't trust his would-be Boswell either. It's hard to tell whether he's kidding — a puckish interview subject, Reubens often teases poor Wolf, who is off-camera — except here's the kicker: In the final seconds of the film, a title card pops up that reads "after a year of filming, Paul stopped cooperating with the production."

Say what? No more interviews, no more reveals, no more puckish repartee? Wolf does in fact somehow procure one final sound bite that Reubens had privately recorded himself the day before his death: "The reason I wanted to make [a documentary] was to let people know who I really am and how painful and difficult it is to be labeled something you are not."

His voice just above a whisper, it's a particularly poignant epitaph, yet ambiguous too. By this point late in the film, you will understand the pain — and injustice — much less so his motivation. A master of camouflage who shielded himself (and his sexual orientation) behind an alter-ego for decades, it's unclear whether Reubens ever fully reveals himself here either. After all, he had had too much practice hiding.

Reubens does come out posthumously in this film when he reveals a long-ago love affair with a San Francisco artist named Guy — no last name given, although viewers are told Guy died years later of AIDS. Tragic more than poignant, Guy appears to have been the only long-term romantic relationship in Reubens' life.

That's the singular bombshell of "Pee-wee as Himself," by the way — and the man who drops it must have known he would be dead by the time it aired.

And so the mystery of Reubens endures. The gift of Pee-wee endures too. Even though he pulled the plug on Wolf, it's hard to imagine a more complete or sympathetic portrait to come along ever again. Or a more entertaining one.

Posthumously, Reubens also remains a Queer icon — "Pee-wee as Himself" makes that perfectly clear, and why — but Wolf otherwise spends almost no screen time on the legacy, which is considerable. Entire schedules on Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network of the '90s were filled with shows inspired by "Pee-wee's Playhouse" — most of all "SpongeBob SquarePants" — and pop culture circa 2025 remains indebted. 

In that final sound bite, Reubens does claim that he wanted viewers to know that "everything I did ... was based in love and my desire to entertain and bring joy ..."

No mystery there — this film conveys that effortlessly. Looks like Reubens put his trust in the right filmmaker after all.

BOTTOM LINE Fascinating, incomplete, portrait of a man of mystery.