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‘Pee-Wee as Himself’ Review: The Late Paul Reubens Opens Up — When He Doesn’t Close Up — In an Expansive Portrait

Matt Wolf's documentary 'Pee-Wee as Himself' gives Paul Reubens, the man behind the Pee-Wee Herman alter ego, a platform to come out of the closet.

Reubens is a compelling enough figure to carry a straightforward bio-doc, and over its substantial length, Wolf’s two-part film does justice to its subject’s thoroughly sui generis artistry — a rare blend of experimental performance, broad comedy and high, queer camp that caught imaginations of all ages — while giving due scrutiny to the off-screen legal troubles that unfairly threw his career off-course. Wolf and editor Damian Rodriguez deftly collate a wealth of material from either Reubens’ personal archives or audiovisual nuggets of the period to evoke a midcentury upbringing in which early American television — and a family move to circus-saturated Sarasota, Florida — shaped a young imagination already inclined toward whimsy and vaudeville exhibitionism. Unsurprisingly, after this dizzy rise, the second half mostly centers the fall, completing a much-needed revisionist view of two amped-up media scandals that tarnished the performer’s reputation and broke the seal of his carefully guarded public image: his 1991 arrest for indecent exposure in an adult cinema, and a decade later, false charges for possession of child pornography.

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