Ferris Bueller's Day Off: DVD Review
January 15, 2006
I was six years old when John Hughes released his best film, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” in 1986, and for the life of me I can’t remember having seen it during its successful initial run, and at that, I can’t remember seeing it at all in the pivotal decade of the ‘80’s, for which the film’s comedy and spirit seems to define. Maybe that’s a good thing, for what would a six year old have in common with Matthew Broderick’s Bueller; a yearning to be free, a yen for adventure on a beautiful spring day, a need to help his best friend come out of his shell and take life by the horns, shuck off authority (parents and teachers especially), responsibility, and self pity and have a little fun in a world filled with endless possibilities? No, I suppose a six year old need not apply to the cult fan base of Hughes’ beloved, free-spirited Chicago romp, but a teenager in the ‘90’s, viewing the film countless times on TV and video (where it instantly became a classic of mid-‘80’s mischief and post-adolescent risk taking), and now again on a newly released special edition DVD, midway through the first decade of the 21st century, which must have seemed like the future in ’86, can find a certain kind of escapist charm in the goofy, sometimes poignant story of school skipping, city touring, and danger dodging that propels the film along so smoothly. Viewing the film today, 20 years after it was made, it’s still fresh, original, and universal, for sure, the hair styles and clothes may be of their period, as well as the posters and technological gadgets cluttering Ferris’ alpha-boy bedroom, but the message is still the same, and it applies not only to high schoolers bored with economics and gym class, but to everybody who ever looked out a window on a balmy spring day and longed for invincibility and precocious free time, that, as Bueller so adequately puts it, directly to us, in the film’s bookend first person monologues, “Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” There’s an idealism in such a statement, and a tiny bit of mischievous wishful thinking, but rarely has a film produced a thesis statement so heavy and lived up to it with such spirit and devil-may-care adventurousness, the world being it’s oyster, and sweet, sweet youthful freedom it’s gloriously shiny pearly.
“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” has been famous these past twenty years simply because it’s fantasy of ditching responsibility for a day of fun is relatable to almost anyone, and the fact that it does it so convincingly, in a medium where the act of viewing is itself a form of leisure away from daily pressures, thus doubling the pleasure, makes it a modern day escapist classic. That it’s brilliantly written, acted, and directed is just icing on the cake, for the second Bueller cons his parents into thinking he’s too sick for school, and a laundry list of ways to make sure such a con will work, magically appears on the screen accompanied by his fourth-wall breaking narration (“It’s a little childish and stupid,” he says of the scam, “but then, so is high school.”), we’ve already bought into the film’s premise, and the character’s determination to have one gloriously fun day with his best mate and girlfriend roaming the streets of Chicago, one destination at a time. To achieve such an euphoric level of individuality in the face of a conformist society (school, family, etc…), the film’s trio – Ferris (Broderick, in a star making performance that will probably outlast anything he’ll ever do), his younger babe of a girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara), and Cameron (Alan Ruck), Bueller’s hypochondriac best friend who represents the pessimist, secluded introvert in all of us – bounce from landmark to landmark, Wrigley’s Field, Sears Tower, the Chicago Stock Exchange, the Museum of Contemporary Art, with one eye on having the best day of their young lives, and another on outsmarting whoever may stand in their way, including parents, snooty Maitre D’s , joyriding garage attendants, jealous sisters (Jennifer Grey, a year shy of “Dirty Dancing”), and annoyed teachers, most notably, bumbling Dean of Students Edward Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), whose doggedly pathetic hounding of Bueller is the film’s key jab at the ridiculousness of authority, and it’s slapstick heart. The sense of imagination and freedom – of going 100 with the wind in your hair in your father’s priceless Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder, of catching a foul ball at an afternoon Cubs game, of viewing masterpieces by Seurat, Van Gogh, and Picasso for the first time, of a downtown parade, where the sound of John Lennon belting out “Twist and Shout” sends 10,000 happy dancers into an orgasmic throng of arms and slowly building “Ah’s” – is what makes the story so prescient, and the relief we feel at the end, when Rooney is humiliated (for the umpteenth time), and Cameron emerges from his pre-adulthood, secluded and cold childhood with a newfound view on life (at 18, it’s a bit late for innocence lost, but never too late for psychological healing), is akin to Ferris’ joy at helping his best friend through a difficult time, and sticking it to the mother of all repressions; conventionality, and all the hackneyed assembly line chores it entails. If you come out of the film with a wonderfully satisfying respect for change, than you’ve understood it perfectly.
Of the eight films John Hughes directed before giving it up in
’91, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is the only one that comes close
to transcending a jokey and silly premise into a profound meditation on
the human condition. Of
course “16 Candles” and “The Breakfast Club” are of an era when
self pity and teenage angst was making a comeback, and they are exemplary
works in the genre Hughes rejuvenated, and “Planes, Trains, and
Automobiles”, and to lesser extent, “Uncle Buck”, work John
Candy’s loveable fat man routine to a near comedic perfection
(‘Planes’ benefits from Steve Martin as well, where ‘Buck’ suffers
from misplaced sentiment and unnecessarily crude comedy), but
‘Bueller’ is the epitome of harmless hedonistic (hyper word: the film
is tame, with no drugs, sex, alcohol, and very little swearing) revelry,
filled with the sights, sounds (the cartoonish music even lends a bit of
surrealism to the generally believable adventures), and bustling
precariousness of getting away with murder. Hughes’ work, especially ‘Bueller’ is comparable in
spirit to the early work of contemporary Robert Zemeckis, but where
Zemeckis’ “Back to the Future” is more dramatic, and perfectly
structured, and “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” is more nostalgic and sweetly
representative of a specific time and place (Beatlemania and the early
‘60’s), Hughes is more concerned with the individual struggle to break
free of obliviousness, to make a mark, and understand the limitless
possibilities of a carefree comedic tableau known as the human being.
You wouldn’t rank Hughes along side Woody Allen, Ernst Lubitsch,
or Billy Wilder in this regard, but for a Hollywood writer/director
working in the vacuous no-man’s land of 1980’s ethics and cinematic
revolution (if there was one), he’s as important a filmmaker as any, and
Ferris Bueller is his everlasting, troublemaking piece de resistance.
The script is priceless, but it’s the cast that makes it so, with 23-year-old Matthew Broderick’s immense charm and cocksure attitude giving Ferris the perfect amount of Tom Sawyerish devilishness, and James Bondish charisma. He’s a dashing hero, we want to be him, and we get the feeling that he wants us to know he understands that we want to be him, making him an inviting character all around. Three years earlier Broderick was messing with serious computer related problems in “War Games”, and three years later he’d be leading the 54th into battle in the Civil War masterpiece “Glory”, but everybody will always remember Ferris Bueller, just like everyone will always remember the first day they played hooky, and got away with it unscathed and smiling. Likewise, despite a whole career of funny supporting characters, including the aloof dad in 1988’s “Beetlejuice”, Jeffrey Jones’ scene stealing Ed Rooney, turning humiliation and annoyed exasperation into an art form, will always be the role people stop him on the street to talk about, ditto Ruck’s great, anguished turn as the daddy-hating Cameron, and Ben Stein’s deadpan cameo as the boring economics teacher with a penchant to drone on absent student’s names longer than he humanly should (“Bueller…Bueller…” is what the new DVD is subtitled). If that’s the price of starring in a film that on paper would seem like a standard comedy odyssey yarn, but in the delicate hands of a director working at his prime, became something of a profound screwball awakening in the middle of arguably the worst cinematic decade in history, than so be it, I can think of worse things to be remembered by. Certainly anybody who has seen Jones in the monumental all-time flop “Howard the Duck” a year later would agree with that.
If the movies are designed to take us away from our own world and take us to a fictional world, one surprisingly similar, mind you, where the simple act of sitting down and watching is escape enough already, than John Hughes and company worked their magic to a tee with “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, presenting us with a simple story structure, a simple comedic design, a simple emotional payoff, and a handful of deceptively simple and charmingly funny characters, and molding it into an everyman’s fantasy, where a fast car, a ball game, a best friend, and a pretty girl means everything in the great scheme of life, life’s pleasures, and life’s ultimate work-a-day grind to serenity.
Paramount has re-released “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” on DVD with about 72 minutes of bonus material, including new interviews with the cast, who all expound on how great Hughes’ film really is, and a funny 10-minute conversation with Ben Stein, who says his one day of filming was the best day of his life, competing successfully with a life full of best selling books, professional opinion columns, and Presidential speeches. Undeniably, Ferris would be proud.
by Adam Suraf