Rent Ferris Bueller's Day Off on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: John Hughes
Directed by: John Hughes
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck, Mia Sara, Jeffrey Jones, Jennifer Grey, Ben Stein
Rated: PG-13
Watch the trailer
Plot
A popular high school student decides to take a day off from school and goes to extreme lengths to pull it off, to the chagrin of his Dean who'll do anything to stop him.
Verdict
This is one of those pop culture icon movies you have to watch, and it's one of those movies where the idea is stronger than anything in the movie. This is the ultimate fantasy where a kid skips school to have the greatest adventure. Ferris is who you want to be and does what you wish you could do. It's the feeling this movie generates that causes it to be remembered more so than the content. It's a simple concept that remains strong, the possibility of experiences if you skip obligations for a day.
Watch It.
Review
It's a pop culture classic, and part of that is the fantasy of the penultimate day of skipping school. It's similar to how Hughes's later movie Home Alone also buys into a certain fantasy of a kid living without parents. Likewise, The Breakfast Club is the ultimate high school fantasy.
The car at the center of the movie, the 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder, was comprised of three replicas.
Ferris (Matthew Broderick) fools his parents into thinking he's sick through various tricks that he breaks the fourth wall to share with the viewer. The impetus for this vacation is that Ferris wants to enjoy life. This day crams in plenty of highlights from a museum to a baseball game to driving a Ferrari. Ferris achieves the dream of not just skipping school but having a great adventure too. It's beyond logic as there's no way he could fit all these activities in to a single day, much less just a work day as depicted, but it's everything we want that skip day to be.
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| Alan Ruck, Mia Sara, Matthew Broderick play Cameron, Sloane, Ferris |
Punctuating Ferris's fun are scenes at the school with a boring economics class. The teacher's voice drones while students fall asleep. That's the reason Ferris wants to skip school, but he also has an adversary in the rigid Principal Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) who goes to great lengths to catch Ferris in a lie. Rooney represents the rigors of reality, trying to crush the fun of Ferris and his best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) and girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara).
To start the day, Ferris has to convince Cameron to join. He does Cameron wrong by taking Cameron's dad's Ferrari. Cameron only relents after a lot of convincing. Ferris crafts the ultimate adventure, a day full of the best the city has to offer. You'd rather be anywhere than school, or work for that matter, and this presents a myriad of possibilities. The idea is stronger than the movie because we've all imagined what we would do if we could skip for a day, what kind of car we'd drive, where we'd go. Even if you didn't care for Ferris's adventure, it makes you think of a day you took or the one you wish you did.
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