Big Adventure saw Pee-wee Rube Goldberg-ing his home in a bewildering explosion of imagination, but in Big Holiday Pee-wee Rube Goldbergs the entire town. It’s the perfect introduction to this movie, and Lee, Rust, and Reubens’ vision is so tremendous here that I daresay that it out-Burtons Burton. Hell, let this guy take a stab at Beetlejuice 2.

The story here—which is perfectly simple, like it should be—sees Pee-wee seeking to leave the security blanket of Fairville for the first time and take a leap for once in his life. The beautiful thing is that the muse that inspires Pee-wee to take such a journey is Joe Manganiello—as himself—with the shiny prize at the end of the rainbow that Pee-wee’s working towards being his birthday party, no less. Look, Joe Manganiello is someone that I never gave a single thought about before (and I’ve watched all of True Blood), but his performance here is a goddamn revelation.

His introduction is absolutely perfect with him essentially playing a variation on Pee-wee. And it’s so, so good (wait until you see him in the suit). He honestly looks like he’s having more fun than Reubens. Apparently Manganiello and Reubens are friends in real life, having met through weird circumstances, which makes the film’s message about the power of friendship all the more poignant. In the largest stretch, this film is almost an adaptation of the true story of their friendship, which is really kind of beautiful.

Pee-wee’s previous two films both dealt with him entering “the real world” in a sense, and Big Holiday feels like it’s going to go much in the same direction. However, the difference here—and it’s why I think this film succeeds so well—is that the message being pushed is that everyone is Pee-wee in a sense. Everyone that Pee-wee encounters on his journey is eccentric in their own ways, just like our bow-tied hero. This starts with Joe—who we see could be separated from Pee-wee at birth since they’re so identical—but as it continues it establishes the idea that even if you leave your comfort zone, that doesn’t mean that you’re alone.

While something like this may feel potentially repetitive, for me it was a delight to see all of these beautiful weirdos that Pee-wee keeps colliding with. Lee really gets to show off his talents here, whether it’s with the eccentric traveling salesman’s car magnets, the recluse of Grizzly Bear Daniels, or the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang-esque flying car that’s briefly boarded. My absolute favorite of these detours is Pee-wee crashing with a bunch of people en route to a hairstyling competition; it creates one of the best visuals out of the movie. There’s also an extended Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! homage running throughout the film, and so for a consummate Russ Meyer fan, that was just the icing on the cake to all of this silliness.