Film review: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), directed by John Hughes

In 1980s cult classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, we meet charismatic, clever and tech-savvy teenager Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) who doesn’t fancy going to school one day, so he starts by convincing his parents how incredibly ill he is. His sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey, the year before she carried a watermelon in Dirty Dancing) doesn’t believe him for a second.

Finally having achieved his mission to have his parents call him in sick, Ferris decides to phone a friend, namely his best buddy Cameron (Alan Ruck, later famous for his role as Stuart in Spin City), who is a sickly and very serious young man. Ferris reckons he should lighten up a bit. Mainly because he happens to have a car, which Ferris doesn’t, and if you’re going to have fun you need a car.

Together, they bust Ferris’s girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara, who to me is always going to be Annie/Elyssa in Time Trax) out of school by pretending to be her father, and off they go to have the best day ever. In Cameron’s dad’s preciously restored – and very expensive – Ferrari …

Meanwhile, school principal Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) is not a happy bunny. He, too, thinks there’s something fishy about Ferris’s illness (which is causing the school pupils to rally to raise money for his alleged kidney transplant) and knowing the young man’s attendance record, he sets out to try and catch Bueller in the act. Lots and lots of cringeworthy slapstick ensues.

A bonus is to see Charlie Sheen as “Boy in Police Station”, talking to Jeanie. The irony of the following exchange is superb:

Sheen: Drugs?
Jeannie: Thank you, no. I’m straight.
Sheen: I meant, are you in here for drugs?
Jeannie: Why are you here?
Sheen: Drugs.

There are two things that I kept thinking about when watching this film (I’ve seen it once before, but it was like a decade ago at least). First one was that Jeanie’s efforts to try and bust her brother must have inspired the creators of Phineas & Ferb years later. Her attempts at bringing her brother’s actions to the attention of her mum are continually foiled, just like those of Candace. Okay, Ferris isn’t exactly building rollercoasters in the back garden, he’s just pretending to be ill to skive off school, but still.

It’s an okay film, and while I sympathise with the teens for having absolutely awful teachers (“Anyone? Anyone?”), I still don’t think being bored is an excuse not to get an education. Add to that, Ferris doesn’t exactly behave like a friend to Cameron when talking him into taking his dad’s precioussssss car, and other things, such as getting him to come over in the first place. He’s being an obnoxious bully, if anything, and that’s not the sort of friend I’d like to hang out with.

I also don’t get how principal Rooney is supposed to be funny, but then again, I also don’t think Mr Bean is funny, because that sort of humour just doesn’t appeal to me. (People tripping and falling over in home videos? Falling over bloody hurts, people! Pain isn’t funny!) The slapstick works quite well in the setting of this movie, however, and overall, it’s an okay film. It’s amusing enough and the characters learn and grow from their experiences.

Still wouldn’t give it more than maybe 2.5 out of 5 sick notes, with sympathetic hugs to Cameron.