Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

2 years ago

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

UM, HE’S SICK. MY BEST FRIEND’S SISTER’S BOYFRIEND’S BROTHER’S GIRLFRIEND HEARD FROM THIS GUY WHO KNOWS THIS KID WHO’S GOING WITH THE GIRL WHO SAW FERRIS PASS OUT AT 31 FLAVORS LAST NIGHT. I GUESS IT’S PRETTY SERIOUS.

by Michelle Said

Growing up, my friends and I couldn’t agree on any bands (they liked Warrant, Poison and Megadeth and I liked Paula Abdul, Whitney Houston and Gloria Estefan, which begs the question of how we were friends in the first place) and I wasn’t allowed to watch television after six o’clock due to my parents’ strict homework-completion policy. This meant that we spent weekends sitting on my friends’ plaid couch, going through their family’s movie collection. Most of them were the illegal bootlegs of their day, taped copies of some TBS or TNT showing in the mid-afternoon. We would carelessly grab worn VHS copies of episodes of Saturday Night Live, The Stand miniseries or Lethal Weapon 2 from their wall-to-wall movie collection and then sit on their fraying plaid couch with a plate of turkey sandwiches and Lays potato chips, zipping through commercials for Nintendo, Bubble Tape, Sparkle Motion Crest, etc, to get to our intended TV show/miniseries/movie of choice.

And then, one weekend, we decided to watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. That was, I believe, the day that I realized I had discovered what was clearly The Greatest Movie of All Time. (Eat that, Scorsese.)

Of course, time has shown me that no, it’s clearly not the greatest film of all time and that yes, there are so many flaws that my memory always conveniently forgets every time I attempt to re-watch it. But like a movie trailer that only shows the best bits, my psyche still believes that this movie is non-stop hilarity, full of wit, heart, and impromptu dance numbers on parade floats in the middle of a Chicago workday. Which it is. Just not the whole thing.

But there’s so much sentimentality that goes into a movie like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off that even attempting a discussion of it is like trying to define a generation, define a certain type of comedy, define why American teenage culture exists. To this day, the film still resonates with people, despite being some twenty-three years old at this point (a number that I find unbelieveably staggering). Ferris Bueller (expertly brought to life by Matthew Broderick) will always be current. He is like the Fonz plus Richie Cunningham with a dash of Greg Brady and a handful of Dennis the Menace. The prototype for Zack Morris, Kevin McCallister, Parker Lewis, and whatever teenage culural icon exists nowadays stands on Bueller’s shoulders (even Clarissa Darling credit her existence to Ferris). Ferris Bueller is almost all cliche, which is precisely why he works so incredibly well.

The film’s plot is the same as almost every single high school movie ever made, which is, essentially: “Quick! We must cram all of our high school memories into one day!” - a process that I felt no desire to replicate once I actually reached the end of my high school years (and thus felt cheated by these cinematic emotions and adventures I felt I was supposed to have had once I finally arrived at that time). But, at the age of 12, I thought that this sort of behavior was basically a blueprint for high school existence. And, instead of going to The Big Party in order to get drunk and make out and regret everything the next day - as so many high school movies often fall back on - Ferris Bueller decides to be a culture vulture instead. He attends a ballgame. He enjoys a museum. He visits the Sears Tower. He goes to fancy restaurants and enjoys - even participates in - a parade. I still find this behavior both refreshing and, well, real. When my friends and I decided to “go on assignment” for “Yearbook,” we never found ourselves suffering in depravity; we went to the beach to have cherry lemonade.

Of course, hijinks ensue and, of course, Ferris’s zany charm befuddles and frustrates his friend (the long-suffering Cameron played by Alan Ruck) and girlfriend (the awesome and quietly witty Sloane, played by Mia Sara) and, of course, it enrages his Principal (Jeffrey Jones) and sister (Jennifer Grey) and, of course, it bewitches an entire metro area (that’d be Chicago).

And, of course, I can’t ever disassociate this movie from all of the times I’ve watched it and all of the times I quote it and all of the turkey sandwiches we ate while watching it.

Michelle Said is a writer living in New York City, and tumbls here. She will be naming her first born child Abe Froman.