‘Pee-wee as Himself’ review: Paul Reubens’ documentary is a must-see for ‘Playhouse’ fans

On its surface, Pee-wee as Himself is a loving two-part documentary looking at the life of the late Paul Reubens, the brilliant comic mind behind the iconic Pee-wee Herman. However, even from the film’s opening moments, the battle is clear between subject and director. Reubens sits before a camera, looking straight down the lens, and speaking to his annoyance that his perspective may not be the dominant one in the finished product.

“It turns out you’re not supposed to control your own documentary,” he laments with clear frustration. He promises the unseen director that he will fight him on this point, adding, “You mark my words.” The title card that comes up next plays like a punchline: A Film By Matt Wolf. 

As Reubens died in July of 2023, Wolf has the last laugh here. But the beloved yet controversial comedian is not the butt of the joke in Pee-wee as Himself. Instead, Wolf smartly sets up this battle between Reubens and himself as a parallel to the main thrust of this HBO original: Pee-wee versus Paul.

Over the two feature-length episodes, the documentary guides audiences through his cheerful childhood and wild years at CalArts, his rise to stardom, the turbulent sexual scandals that made him tabloid fodder for years, as well as his comeback. Through it all, Reubens and Wolf explore how Pee-wee was a blessing and a curse for the provocative artist. In doing so, Wolf creates as in-depth a portrait of Reubens as any fan of Pee-wee could ever hope for. However, that means seeing behind the playful boyish exterior, which had so long been a shield, to see the sensitive, wounded man behind him. 

Paul Reubens shares his queerness and inspirations in Pee-wee as Himself. 

A dedicated collector, Reubens not only opens his Los Angeles home with its absurd wealth of kitschy collectibles to Wolf, but also his family photo albums, revealing pictures of him dressed in drag in college and on a Halloween in his youth. With long, elegant dark hair down to his waist, he was an androgynous vision at the art school, playing Jesus in one student film and a sultry mermaid inspired in the next. (When he says he was channelling Cher, the inspiration is immediately clear.)

In interviews, Reubens speaks warmly about the creative discovery of these days, when he first became friends with Laraine Newman, Phil Hartman, and Elvira, the last of whom also shares warm recollections in the doc. But cozy remembrances of twenty-something performance art and first love takes a heart-wrenching turn as Reubens admits frankly that he realized his queerness would be an obstacle to success. So he cut his hair short and strove to “pass” so he might make it big.

When he looks into the camera to explain directly to a younger generation less accustomed to brutal homophobia of the 1980s what “passing” means, there’s a familiar pull, like when Pee-wee would look right out to the kids at home, urging them to be their weird selves. Yet here, our hero admits how he hid. 

Reubens gets the last word, eventually.

Wolf’s team is up front about the access they had to the star. In title cards they note two important elements to the film’s context: 1) Wolf and his team interviewed Reubens for 40 hours, and 2) In that time Reubens never chose to reveal his cancer diagnosis to them. So, he was aware these might be his last days, but the filmmakers were not. The film was precious to its director and subject in different ways. As such, there’s an electrifying tension watching his interviews, because while he insists he’s not fretting about his “legacy,” these very videos show it was on his mind. 

In one moment, he’ll offer up a deeply personal revelation, but in the next, he’ll insist with a sharp or bored tone that he was joking. As Pee-wee’s creator and player, he was in control of his image for much of his professional career. On one hand, his alter-ego was a worldwide sensation, heading hit films like Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, the adored children’s program Pee-wee’s Playhouse and its spinoff Broadway revival, and endless appearances on talk shows — but always in character. This gave Reubens anonymity, but also denied him acclaim beyond his playhouse buffoonery. But all that changed in 1991, over an incident in an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Florida. 

When the film speaks on this scandal and the unrelated obscenity allegations that arose in 2002, Reubens’ perspective takes a backseat. It becomes clear through his absence that Wolf and his team hadn’t gotten much footage on these topics before the actor’s death. In his place, the friends that stood by him, like his personal assistant Allison Berry, Debi Mazar, and David Arquette, share what those years of public scorn and isolation were like for him. There’s an ache in his absence from this second half of the doc, which — intentionally or not — reflects the greater loss of Reubens in the world, both during his exile and now, in the wake of his death.

Yet there’s a glorious resilience in his example. For each time he was knocked down and publicly scorned, he rose again, making films and TV shows in character (2016’s delightfully daffy Pee-wee’s Big Holiday) and out (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mystery Men, Pushing Daisies). For Wolf, it could have been easiest to make this upswing the end of his movie, remembering Reubens on a high note. Instead, he circles back to the man himself, playing the self-recorded audio that the multi-hyphenate phenomenon left behind for use in the movie. In it, Reubens’ sounds painfully exhausted, but he speaks plainly about how he hopes to be remembered, trying one last time perhaps to take control over a project he worried would define him without his direction. 

In the end, Pee-wee as Himself is not a simple love letter to the iconic character or Reubens. That would suggest Wolf goes easy on either, fawning over them without reservation. This is something greater. Wolf gives Reubens the space to speak for himself, allowing in the edit even the moments when the actor — traumatized by tabloid coverage — second-guesses his desire to share himself. Yet, what’s clearest in this marvelous movie is how Pee-wee was a kitschy collection of Reubens’ greatest loves and most-treasured ideals. Pee-wee’s Playhouse embraces queer performance art, Andy Warhol paintings, and punk band graffiti in a candy-colored vision that allowed its subversion to sneak under the nose of Reagan’s ruthlessly conservative America. Through bonkers cartoons, outrageous characters, flailing puppets, and secret words of the day, Pee-wee urged children to be seen, heard, and unapologetically themselves. 

This was his gift to us as children. Thought-provoking, boldly funny, and emotionally riveting, Pee-wee as Himself is his gift to us as grown-ups, as it reveals how hard that lesson can be, and how we must keep pushing ourselves to learn it. 

Pee-wee as Himself was reviewed out of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.