“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”
1986 • PG-13 • 1h 43mins • Rent it • Watch trailer
The days, they ain’t easy. This week we follow last week’s 10 Things I Hate About You with “one man’s struggle to take it easy.” We’re taking a day off with a totally rewritten review of what may be the most shelf-stable ‘80s classic of all time. It’s 1986’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Here’s the plot. Ferris (Matthew Broderick) is a high school senior playing sick to stay home, sans the staying home. He’d tell you it’s just cutting school, but he’s trading blows with a full-on existential crisis. Ferris meets up with junior Sloane (Mia Sara) and fellow senior Cameron (Alan Ruck). The city-wide hijinks that follow play more like a TikTok feed than a movie per se, but in a good way. Hot on the triad’s heels is Vice Principal Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), who’s determined to catch school-skipping Ferris and giving him an additional year at the school of hard knocks. Also with no sympathy for Ferris is his sister, Jeanie (Jennifer Grey), who hates that Ferris gets away with whatever. Will Rooney end Ferris’ day off? Or will the Indiana Jones movie-sized rolling boulder of inevitable life change catch up with him first? And ♫ how do you solve a problem like Ferrariiiii? ♫
This is a John Hughes movie. The man says he wrote the script in a single week because the Writers Guild was about to strike. Maybe that explains the trance-like flow of the film. Hughes shaped a whole lot of pop culture’s understanding of the ‘80s. His specific slice of the pie is coming-of-age yarns about suburban teens. Hughes is also responsible for National Lampoon’s Vacation, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, and Home Alone—and that’s just the ‘80s. Every decade has its hagiographers. The ‘80s had Hughes.
This is Chicago’s movie. Hughes gives Second City a cinematic bear hug here. We see Sears Tower, Wrigley Field, the Art Institute of Chicago, and more. It’s dripping in vibes. It’s been a while since I’ve been, but I feel like I’m seeing myself in the Bean all over again when I put this on. Hughes himself said, “Chicago is what I am. A lot of Ferris is sort of my love letter to the city. America has this great reverence for New York. I look at it as this decaying horror pit. So let the people in Chicago enjoy Ferris Bueller.”
Ferris Bueller’s spawned a TV spinoff. It ran for thirteen episodes on NBC in the fall of 1990. If you think ironically self-aware media is just a now thing, you’re dead wrong. Ferris Bueller was the (fictional) real-life exploits of the titular Bueller. In the first episode our meta-fictional protagonist takes out his dislike at Matthew Broderick playing “him” by chainsawing a cardboard standup of Broderick. Weird that it didn’t last. Two casting notables: Jennifer Aniston played Ferris’s sister Jeanie. The always great Jane Lynch guest starred as a teacher. I just dipped back into The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which gives Lynch a hearty diet of scenery to chew to, well, marvelous effect. That? Right there? That was writing, my friend. [tilts his writing beret]
Did audiences of ’86 like this? Critics sure did. Roger Ebert gave it three stars out of four in his review. Richard Roeper hailed it as a suicide prevention narrative. Ferris sets out to show Cameron the world in a day, not to find himself but to open the door to self-actualization. Mark Hemingway called it an “expression of ordinary American freedom”. Ferris Bueller’s saturated the American zeitgeist so thoroughly that Barbara Bush quoted it in her ’90 commencement address. It made $71M against a production budget of $5M. I’m no numbers guy, but that’s a great return.
In 2010, Broderick said, “For the past 25 years, nearly every day someone comes up to me, taps me on the shoulder, and says, ‘Hey, Ferris, is this your day off?’” Ruck says the flick holds up so well because, while most teen comedies spend their runtime and conflict on the frailties of brokeness and sex-wanting, Ferris Bueller’s does it different. Hughes’s on-screen teens are whole people. With dignity. They’re not embryos. Their goal is not adulthood. Cameron, Sloane, and Ferris are living the tricky and wonderful lifetime we all live within our teen years. It’s not about the plot points—it about how you move through your day.
Hope you enjoyed this one! Thanks for reading. Me, I could rewatch Ferris Bueller’s every year like an annual checkup. It does a person good (this person, anyway). Next week we start a Valentine’s Day two-parter on Titanic. Why two parts? Great question, I love your enthusiasm! I’ll explain next time.
And, hey, if you liked this, share it someone else! May the gospel of Ferris reach all people.
NOTES:
The next year Jennifer Grey would star in Dirty Dancing.
Alan Ruck, of current Succession fame, was up for the part of Bender in The Breakfast Club but didn’t make the cut. Hughes didn’t forget him, casting him in this afterward.
Actors who almost played Ferris: Anthony Michael Hall, Jim Carrey, John Cusack, Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, and Michael J. Fox.
Ben Stein, the “Bueller…?” teacher, started out as a speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford before getting into showbiz.
2014 saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off entered into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for preservation. Librarians are smart folks.
Here’s an interactive guide to everywhere Ferris goes in Chicago.
Hughes’s film National Lampoon’s Vacation is based on his earlier essay for National Lampoon magazine titled “Vacation ’58”.
A spin-off focused on the two valets who drive Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari is in development for Paramount+. It’s called Sam & Victor’s Day Off.
Cameron’s dad’s car was a ’61 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder. Wide shots feature replicas, which the crew hated because they often didn’t start. But tight shots used the real thing, only 100 of which were ever manufactured. A 250 GT California went for $16.8M at auction in ’15.
Vanity plates in Hughes films: “VCTN” (National Lampoon’s Vacation), “TBC” (The Breakfast Club), “MMOM” (Mr. Mom), “4FBDO” and “NRVOUS” (Ferris Bueller’s).
Also from ’86: Top Gun, The Karate Kid Part II, Short Circuit, Labyrinth, Pretty in Pink.