Ferris Bueller's Day Off

I've mentioned the Blind Spot movie blogathon several times in the past, and that the main reason I don't take part in it is that I don't really know ahead of time what movies I'm going to be watching over the course of the year. Since I've still got a few more months living someplace without unlimited high-speed internet, I can't just stream movies willy-nilly. (I don't think we've bought a TV set since Mom died either, which is almost 8 years, so anything I'd watch would have to be on a smaller computer monitor.) Having said that, one of the movies I could have used for the Blind Spot series is Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I finally got around to watching it the other day.

I assume that most people know the basic story. 23-year-old Matthew Broderick plays Ferris Bueller, a high school senior living in one of the tony suburbs of Chicago with his parents and kid sister Jeanie, played by 25-year-old Jennifer Grey. Ferris has a severe case of what at my high school back in the day was referred to as "senioritis", basically wanting to be done with the whole high school thing and get on with whatever would come next. He's already had eight absences in the spring semester, and since the movie opens on a really nice spring day, Ferris just doesn't want to go to school.

With that in mind, Ferris fakes illness, with his clueless parents believing that he's actually sick, albeit old enough to spend the day at home alone. Not believing him is Jeanie, as well as the school's dean of students, Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones). Ferris is a computer whiz, so he sets things up to make it look like he really is sick and fool the dean. Rooney pretty much knows this, so plans to investigate Bueller and catch him not at home since Ferris' plan is to have a day out on the town.

Of course, playing hooky is no fun if you're doing it alone. Fortunately, Ferris' best friend Cameron (29-year-old Alan Ruck) is a hypochondriac with parents who seem to show little interest in him. Who knows where Mom is, and Dad cares more about his classic cars than he does about Cameron. Cameron also reveals that his parents don't seem to love each other anymore. In any event, today is one of the days that Cameron might actually be sick, so Ferris calls him to suggest that the two of them go to town together.

Well, not just them. Ferris has a girlfriend in Sloane (18-year-old Mia Sara, the one cast member who is of an appropriate age), and comes up with a ruse to get her out of school, one that's going to involve a fair bit of preparation to try to fool the dean. To top it all off, when Ferris and Cameron go to pick Sloane up at school, Ferris knows the dean won't believe Sloane's father drives a clunker like the car Cameron drives, so Ferris convinces Cameron to take his father's Ferrari into Chicago.

The three get into all sorts of adventures in Chicago, while Rooney decides to go to the Bueller house to see if Ferris is actually there. Ferris actually had a plan for that, although that plan does go awry. It's not a victory for Rooney, however, as Jeanie also shows up looking for Ferris, and that throws a monkey wrench into things.

It's easy to see why Ferris Bueller's Day Off was such a big hit back in the day. I was born a bit too late to se the Hughes films back in the day and, as I've said whenever I review one of those 80s teen movies, Hughes' or otherwise, my high school days weren't anything like that. I don't think it approached that even for some of the rich kids in my district. We were all a bit too square, although I was probably the sqaurest of them all. That, combined with watching the movies as a significantly older person than the target audience, leads me to see the plot holes with a bit more clarity than I probably would have if I had watched it as a teen.

Having said that, the movie mostly holds up 35 years on, while teens of today might enjoy seeing how the 80s saw themselves, and not how the parodies of today see it. Ferris Bueller's Day Off is definitely one that should be seen if you haven't seen it before.