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Ferris Bueller's Day OffDirected by John HughesComedyPG-131h 43m
- June 11, 1986
Credit...The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from June 11, 1986, Section C, Page 24Buy Reprints
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FERRIS BUELLER, an amazing high-school senior, leads a charmed life. First of all, he is actually popular across group lines - breaking a teen-age hierarchy that makes India's caste system look egalitarian. The jocks, druggies, heavy-metal types, preppies, losers, grinds and popular kids all think he's swell. Why? Because he has that magic ability so prized in adolescence - he can get away with anything.
Ferris wants to take a day off from his suburban school to see the sights of downtown Chicago. He thinks it would be fun if his girlfriend Sloane and his best buddy Cameron came along, and even better if they could spin around town in Cameron's father's prized red Ferrari. Arranging this is no problem for Ferris Bueller. He has the basic skills for teen-age success, according to the film. He can lie, manipulate and con people with inspired genius, especially in the service of a noble cause such as playing hooky.
John Hughes, the writer-director who showed he had his finger on the pulse of teen-age America with ''Sixteen Candles,'' ''The Breakfast Club'' and ''Pretty in Pink,'' now brings us ''Ferris Bueller's Day Off,'' which opens today at Loew's Paramount and other theaters. There is something slightly unsettling about Mr. Hughes's Peter Pan world view. He has the sensibility and vision of an adolescent with the technical know-how and expertise of an adult. The movies that result are uncanny re-creations - and celebrations - of a teen-age point of view.
In this film, adults are divided into three categories: venal and unloving, like Cameron's father; loving but ineffectual and easy to dupe, like Ferris's parents, and comic fools who have power but are fun to outwit, like Ed Rooney, the dean of students, played with fine cartoonlike ferocity by Jeffrey Jones. Like all good cartoon heavies, Ed Rooney gets scratched, bitten, attacked by ferocious dogs and covered with mud while pursuing his weaker, but craftier, prey, and emerges each time bruised but undaunted, thinking up some new (and futile) plan. He may keep trying, but the audience knows he can't catch Ferris Bueller any more than the coyote can catch the Road Runner.
In this adolescent world, gym class looks like forced recreation in the prison yard, and students at school are like subjects in an experiment to see how long human beings can remain awake in the face of unbearable boredom. The camera pans the faces of students who are valiently struggling to keep their eyes open while teachers drone on in soporific tones as deadening as sleeping gas.
Opposed to all this - a voice of freedom in the darkness - is Ferris Bueller, played with impish charm by Matthew Broderick. Mr. Broderick is self-confident and easygoing. He often chats directly with the viewer by speaking to the camera, much as he spoke to the audience as the narrator in Neil Simon's ''Brighton Beach Memoirs'' and ''Biloxi Blues.'' But Ferris Bueller is a fantasy: a teen-ager who is practically a living contradiction in terms - utterly self-confident and without any problems -and Mr. Broderick's performance is not quite compelling enough to pull it off.
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Ferris Bueller is a charming, free-spirited, and imaginative high school senior. He's very popular and has a foxy girlfriend, a true-blue buddy, and doting parents. He also has a sulky sister who is very jealous of him — and well she should be: Ferris is a talented kid who gets what he wants.
One sunny spring day, Ferris (Matthew Broderick) decides to play hooky from school. He convinces his parents (Cindy Pickett and Lyman Ward) that he is ill and then talks Cameron (Alan Ruck), his best friend, into "borrowing" his dad's Ferrari. They spring Ferris's girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara) from school using the ruse that her grandmother has died.
The dean of students, Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones in a hysterically funny slapstick performance), is convinced that Bueller is deceiving him, and so he sets out to expose Ferris's truancy. Trouble is, our hero has several contingency plans in place at home to deal with Rooney. What he hasn't foreseen are the angry feelings of his sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey), who wants to see him fail at something — anything.
While these two wonder about Ferris's whereabouts, he and his co-conspirators drive to Chicago where they visit the Sears Tower, Wrigley Field, the Art Institute, and the city's Mercantile Exchange. Ferris cons his way into a chic restaurant and caps the day's events by taking over Chicago's annual German-American parade and leading the participants in a lively version of "Twist and Shout."
Writer-director John Hughes (Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink) has come up with another snappy and thought-provoking film about adolescence. Nobody does it better. With Ferris Bueller's Day Off, he has brought to the screen an approximation of every teenager's fantasy of omnipotence in a world where adults and authority figures can be manipulated. While his soporific schoolmates nod off in their classes, he, Sloane, and Cameron expand their horizons and test their improvisational skills out on the streets of the city. Ferris plays trickster, Sloane wonders about love, and Cameron wrestles with negative feelings about his father.
In his captivating performance as Ferris, actor Matthew Broderick occasionally turns to the camera to speak to the audience. At one point, he observes: "I've said it once. I'll say it again: life moves pretty fast; if you can't stop and look around, you could miss it." Ferris Bueller was the Huck Finn of the 1980s.
To be a teenager is to be vulnerable, raw, and anxious as well as confused about family, school, friends, and what tomorrow will bring. Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a fantasy that allows us to experience the mastery, the glory, the fun, and the power of being in control of our destiny for at least one carefree day of total freedom.
Why is Ferris Bueller's Day Off so good?
In both writing and iconography, the film has a spate of memorable moments and quotable lines, from Cameron's intense examination of Seurat's pointilist masterpiece “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” to Principal Ed Rooney's (Jeffrey Jones) absurdly enunciated “nine times.” Nearly forty years later, ...
Is Ferris Bueller's Day Off worth watching?
FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF comes from John Hughes and it's easy to see why so many people really love this picture. There's a certain innocent quality that comes with it that makes it something rather special and especially when you consider what other types of teen comedies were being released around this time.
What are the inappropriate scenes in Ferris Bueller's Day Off?
Occasional kissing/making out, references to seeing a girl change before she goes swimming (nothing shown), a woman dressed as a nurse delivers a racy "candygram." Ferris looks at an illustration of a nude woman on a computer and appears to enlarge her breast size. Passing mention of herpes.
What is the message of Ferris Bueller's Day Off?
Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a film that can be interpreted as an existentialist text, with its themes of individuality, freedom, and the search for meaning in life. This can be seen through the character of Ferris, who represents the idea of the individual in revolt against societal norms and expectations.