A high school boy decides to cut school with his girlfriend and best friend, evading parents, the principal, and responsibility itself as they paint the town red.
I love John Hughes. There’s something about his sense of humor and his tenderness towards emotion and family that can move you to go from laughing hysterically to tearing up with a smile on your face. His stories have a heart, and the characters never feel flat. Well, almost never. That’s why it’s almost painful for me to say that I don’t like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I want to. I’ve tried. But there’s just something about it that doesn’t have the emotional impact and depth of his other works, and I think it all boils down to one simple fact; Ferris Bueller is an asshole. He’s an unlikeable spoiled brat who’s a bad influence on everyone around him, yet people worship him for it. It’s exactly what’s wrong with high school, condensed into one character who you might admire as a teenager, but will grow to hate as an adult.
Like I said, though, John Hughes himself is wonderful as both director and writer. He knows how to tell a story in a way that’s relatable and endearing while also being funny and quotable. And on the surface, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is no different. But when you really pay attention to the film and watch it with the eyes of someone who has seen life as an adult, it just doesn’t hold up. Even when you look back on your years of being a teenager, realizing the traits that you share with Ferris isn’t exactly a good thing. Cameron and Sloane are okay, as is Jeanie, but nobody wants to be a Ferris Bueller.
I blame part of this on Matthew Broderick. His portrayal of the character feels haughty, smug, and conceited, with his emotions feeling shallow and his motives undeniably murky. He’s mean, doesn’t care who he hurts, and only focuses on what he wants in life. A typical narcissistic rich boy who’s trying to hold onto the end of the days when he can get away with murder simply for being a teenager. Meanwhile, his sister Jeanie, played by Jennifer Grey, is treated like crap for trying to fly straight and narrow, and while I get the overarching vibe of letting loose and living a little, maybe we shouldn’t encourage teens and young adults to cover for each other’s back behaviors. Alan Ruck is the most likeable of everyone as Cameron. In fact, I would like the movie more if it were Cameron Fry’s Day Off instead. He’s just a genuinely more interesting character, and he feels like an untapped well of real world issues that are glossed over instead of being addressed, like depression, abusive and absent parents, and aimlessness in life. And finally, while Mia Sara tries her best, Sloane feels flat and useless to the plot, there for comic relief and not much else. Of course, we won’t even mention Jeffrey Jones. Ed Rooney is a funny character, but what Jones did in real life is not, and it puts a big damper on the entire film as a result.
The cinematography is very much Hughes’s style, though, as his specific style creates humorous physical comedy moments that are perfectly depicted here. The soundtrack is fun, too, with an extremely recognizable score, even almost 40 years later.
While it’s fun and enjoyable, and probably one of those movies you should see before you die just because of how pivotal of a role it played in cinema of the 80s, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off hasn’t aged all that well, and it’s best if we use it as a way to talk about problematic behaviors that are excused in teens and young adults simply because they’re privileged. Life moves pretty fast, and it’s unfortunately left this one behind.