1986 / 98 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

These words are at the heart of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, a movie that is about the importance of stopping to have a good time. You may not think that is important, but just stop to imagine for an instant how miserable your life would be without those precious moments of recreation. After all, why the hell else do we go to work if not so that we can afford to have a good time when we don’t have to work? Think about that for a minute.

Ferris realizes the importance of having a good time. It is his mission in life, in fact. And he excels at it. So far this semester, he has been absent nine times. If he goes for one more, he’s going to have to barf up a lung, so he has to make this one count. Making it count is what Ferris does, and in high style. This is a lesson that Lester Burnham in “American Beauty” would do well to learn.

Speaking of Lester, this movie has its own Lester: a man whose senses are deadened to life all around him, a man who is undergoing a midlife listlessness at the ripe old age of 17. I am speaking, of course, about Cameron Frye. A very neurotic, depressed young man who reminds me of a couple friends I have. If anyone needs a day off under Ferris’s expert tutelage, it is Cameron. Ferris says it best: “If you stuck a lump of coal up his ass in two weeks you would have a diamond.”

Also along for the ride is Ferris’s girlfriend: Sloane Peterson. She’s just along because she is Ferris’s girlfriend. Oh, and because Ferris plans to marry her. Maybe even that day.

Another element of the plot, and one that is a great source of hilarity, is Principal Edward R. Rooney. Ferris represents everything he loathes about the younger generation. He wants to stop Ferris at all costs. Ferris is Moby Dick and Rooney (played exquisitely by Jeffrey Jones) is a demented Captain Ahab, determined to root this truant out at all costs. Rooney is a thin villain, but he is not entirely a badly written one. One teacher I had in high school actually said that Rooney was the most accurate depiction of a principal he’d ever seen. And he should know. He’s dealt with enough of them. And why wouldn’t he resent this kid? He’s breaking the rules that this man has set out and making him look like, in the words of his own secretary, “an ass”.

Plus, Rooney is probably more than a little jealous. I mean, here is this eighteen year old punk who has life figured out while Rooney is still searching for the answers.

“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is the best teenager movie ever made, and I will tell you why. It realizes that those experiences we had as teens basically set us up for all the stupidity of life and the disappointments that it brings. It was the time when the majority of our character was formed. How we dealt with situations back then is basically how we will be dealing with them for the rest of our lives. It is about more than just a kid skipping school. It is, like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” only better, a story about a nonconformist who makes his own rules. It is a story about a man who swims against the tide and the figure of authority that wishes to force society’s rules upon him. It is about not taking things too seriously and about knowing when to kick back and relax.

And it contains a great performance by Alan Ruck as the ever-depressed Cameron Frye. He is hilarious simply because his portrayal is so expertly-drawn. He needs no pratfalls, no hilarious lines (although he does have quite a few). He is great simply because he becomes poor Cameron and gives the character all sorts of brilliant little nuances and moments that make it real. A good actor knows how to do this.

But Matthew Broderick’s performance is perfect also. He strikes just the right note. His character is a bit on the ludicrous side, but it has to be. Cameron is the character that most of us were like in high school. But Ferris is the guy that we all WANTED to be. He is on top of things. He has it all figured out. He has a beautiful girlfriend, gullible parents and access to a Ferrari. With all those things, it is quite an achievement that we don’t hate him, that we don’t absolutely loathe him the moment he comes on the screen. So I would say that Matthew does a fine job.

So does Jeffrey Jones as the poor, put-upon Rooney. I love this poor bastard in any movie he is in. He always makes me smile, just seeing his name on the credits is enough to make me happy. I know that whatever else may happen in the movie I am watching, at least he will be of interest. And here, my God, he is an unhinged loony and I love him for it. I love the way he walks around like Dirty Harry when he’s really just an impotent (you can tell just from his characterizations and the car he drives) little weenie.

All I am saying is that, if you haven’t seen this little gem of a comedy in a while, you owe it to yourself to do so. It’s a lot richer than you may remember. And, unlike all of John Hughes’s other movies, it holds up even after you forget a lot of what high school was really like.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 19th, 1999 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.