First things first. Yes, there is already a Ruthless Review and refreshingly intense psychoanalysis of this John Hughes-penned-and-directed 1986 classic. And, before any of our fine readers accuse me of a dilettantism, I am actually not guilty of. The piece is excellent, head-spinning, and a subversive reframing of a popular film –written long before similar yet shockingly lazy attempts were made by thousands of other websites currently choking on AI slop so hard that we’re bound to write about it over here any day now.
What I’ll be describing is a fresh impression of the film, from a viewing I attended last night with my mom. Cinemas here in California do a thing on Tuesday evenings, where films deemed “classic” by some combination of awards tally, cult fandom, and re-watchability are presented in high-res digital projections, either restored, upscaled, or simply transferred to data from original film stock. My mother attends them pretty regularly; I go on occasion, but for this one, since we’ve watched this film together an uncountable number of times, her proposal to pair up seemed like fate.
Plus, I was interested in seeing if repetition over the years would inure me to discovering new facets of the film, presented as originally intended by all involved. Remember that home video was in its Second Act when the movie hit theaters, and owning VHS copies of films was either a good deal if they were mass-produced, or insanely pricey if distributors didn’t think the public would want more than a one-night stand in the living room. I once managed a Blockbuster Video next to Fred Flintstone’s urologist’s office, so I know what I’m talking about, you wise ass kids.
We were treated to the showing of a film now just shy of four decades old, yet seemingly timeless in the Godzilla-like tracks it has stomped into collective pop culture consciousness. Matthew Broderick, Mia Sara, Alan Ruck, and Jeffrey Jones star in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, crafted by frequent Brat Pack collaborator and prodigious capturer of the entire eighties and early nineties’ zeitgeist, John (Wilden) Hughes (Junior).
For the sake of anyone that has not seen the film and is genuinely interested in a first-time viewing, I offer an unironic, spoiler-free plot description. We all have iconic cultural blind spots, so no judgments here. For instance, I had never seen The Deer Hunter in its entirety until I was well past my fortieth birthday. I knew the (first) Russian roulette scene well enough, and with some acting background, have always sought out scenes with the brilliant John Cazale, a true chameleon taken from us far too soon. But otherwise, I was shocked to see Meryl Streep turn up and was blown away by Christopher Walken’s range. We all love him, but we forget that he once embraced subtlety, rather than persona, as an actor.
And so, Ferris Bueller is our titular protagonist, the son of successful Chicago suburban parents, lone brother to a lone sister –played with flamethrower hilarity by a pre-Dirty Dancing Jennifer Grey– we come to know as one of countless antagonists as the titular day plays out, and along the way, a best friend confronts fears of his post-high school future, a girlfriend serves as both charismatic arm-candy and His Girl Friday-style foil, and we finally confront our Big Bad, a school principal with the ethics of a snake oil chemotherapy billionaire.
Ferris is a high school senior, and this sick day will be his ninth of the year. We the audience learn, through countless scenes where Ferris cajoles, tricks, charms, and outright scams other people, that he is a comedic antihero, a chaotic archetype currently typified by the likes of actors like Ryan Reynolds and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
After fooling his parents but, importantly, not his sister, Ferris embarks on an impossibly intricate series of adventures involving classic sports cars, haute cuisine, professional sports, a float-packed parade, an art museum, borrowed identities, foot chases, near misses, a medical emergency, and multiple character arcs more Salinger than Tolkien.
Because of his inexplicable popularity throughout seemingly all the greater Chicago area, there is a community outpouring of support for Ferris’s “illness,” and the phrase “Save Ferris” crops up all over the place, hinting at a Ferris Cinematic Universe we only just glimpse. Related fun fact: a relatively well-known ska-punk band of the same name emerged in the mid-nineties, and you may still hear them on whatever passes for alternative radio these days.
That’s it, that’s my plot summary. Cut to Matthew and his mother Judy, seated at the back of a medium-sized auditorium, enjoying their trillionth viewing of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
What leapt out first, to both of us, was how seeing the film widescreen revealed details that pan-and-scan versions, or whatever cropping techniques cable television has used, had strongly affected the way that each of us took in certain scenes. She had never noticed, for instance, that in the sequence where our intrepid teenagers lean against the observation windows near the top of the Sears Tower, at the far-right of frame, there are a pair of older men, nonchalantly chatting in German and wearing inexplicable psychedelic fish-headwear.
I do remember them, but my visual memory borders on photographic, which is both a blessing and a curse, especially when you’re a horny single guy with a sordid past, and it’s the dead of night, and WHY AM I TELLING YOU THIS?
For me, the Dolby-delivered soundtrack was the biggest standout, blazing and booming throughout. Big Audio Dynamite, The English Beat, Zapp, John Williams and, perhaps most memorably, Wayne Newton, swaggered and propelled scenes in ways that, dulled by years of the TV volume set to Respectable, I had largely forgotten about. Electro-funk, New Wave, British Invasion, bombastic orchestral, and Newton’s megahit with the inexplicable German title, all perfectly placed as either score or diegetic location enhancer. Ugh, and that utterly gorgeous Dream Academy cover of The Smiths, played over the scene where our heroes visit the Art Institute of Chicago! This has always been my favorite sequence, and it was moving to experience it on a wide screen, with the atmospheric instrumental swimming through precisely arranged speakers.
Knowing the plot backward and forward, I let my mind drift a bit, bobbing through each set piece and smattering of oft-quoted banter. These scenes held up surprisingly well, but were also melancholic in reminding me of a time when even something as terrifying as the Cold War could not completely ruin your day. Leaving the theater, even without news radio on, the tsunami of cruel stupidity America is currently drowning in came flooding back… which surprised neither of us.
As times and tastes change, so too does what AAMPAS allows under certain ratings, and holy shit does Ferris Bueller’s Day Off have a lot of swearing in it! If I weren’t in recovery and felt like wasting an evening, a drinking game where a shot is downed every time a character says “goddamn” would send me to the ER with alcohol poisoning well before the closing credits.
And you know that weird-ass thing that happens to every single one of us when, seemingly out of nowhere, a comment or an incident strikes us helplessly giddy, and we laugh so hard that a humorless home intruder would be forced to blow our heads off if we were told to shut up, or we’d get both barrels?
For me, this was Principal Ed Rooney trying to see over the Bueller family’s fence, slipping off a sprinkler head, losing his shoe in (gloriously surround-sound tracked) muck, and cursing a blue streak the entire time, which had me next door to an asthma attack. Zero idea how to explain this logically, but I was palming tears of hysteria off my face for minutes afterward.
Now, as far as I know, this screening wasn’t part of an ongoing nationwide event, but if you like the film and have the chance to watch it as a 4K restoration on a solid home theater setup, I (we) highly recommend it. The film has aged surprisingly well, is cleverly constructed and still breezy even when tackling some pretty heavy subject matter, and that soundtrack is a generation-hopping wonder. Save Ferris, indeed.
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