Ferris Bueller's Day Off
By Joe Leydon

June 10, 1986 |  With movies such as Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, writer-director John Hughes earned big bucks by pandering to teenage audiences with gross-out gags, pop culture cross-references, anti-authoritarian pot shots, and fawning sympathy for self-pitying adolescents.

Lately, though, Hughes seems to be mellowing out, if not growing up. Pretty in Pink -- which he wrote and produced, and newcomer Howard Deutch directed -- was a humane, generous-spirited comedy about value judgments and peer pressures among students at a Chicago high school. And his latest effort, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, is a slight but larky daydream of modest rebellion.  It’s about teenagers, of course, but it has a frisky appeal that can bridge any generation gap. Indeed, it’s a fulfillment of a well-nigh universal fantasy -- so I don’t think you have to be a teenager to enjoy it.

Much as its title indicates, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is all about a brief, unauthorized vacation. Ferris, played with cheeky self-assurance and infectious good humor by Matthew Broderick, is a high school senior who has mastered the art of playing hooky. First, he bamboozles his parents (and annoys his incredulous younger sister) with a meticulously feigned illness.  Then, after everyone else in the house has left for work or school, he goofs off a bit, toying with his home computer and sunning himself by the pool.
 
When that gets dull, he phones his best friend, a gawky hypochondriac who’s intimidated by rich parents, and convinces the sickly fellow to come by.  Together, they spring Ferris’ girlfriend from school with some carefully timed phone calls and a convincing tale of domestic tragedy. Then the trio takes off for downtown Chicago, for a day of simple but satisfying misadventures.
 
And that’s about it, as far as a plot goes. Here and there, Hughes drops hints that he’s building toward some riotous climax, as fellow students spread the rumor that Ferris needs a kidney transplant. But perhaps the most endearing quality about Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is that Hughes doesn’t go for a big finish, that he doesn’t set into motion an interlocking chain of coincidence that results in a monumental pratfall.

No, Hughes’ ambitions are as modest as his movie is engaging: He simply wants to show how three people might enjoy a break from their workaday routine by simply cutting out, going to a museum, having lunch in a ritzy restaurant, taking in a ballgame, and otherwise avoiding all major responsibilities for 24 hours or so. Hughes’ only real mistake is, near the end, he insists on showing how this day off has dramatically changed the life of a major character. The emotional upheaval seems out of place in such a light comedy. Worse still, it’s dramatically unconvincing.
 
But never mind. Broderick’s smooth, ever-confident patter gives Ferris Bueller’s Day Off just the right air of breezy insouciance. Hughes has Bueller directly address the audience -- always in character, but often while in the presence of other characters -- and this device could have seemed awfully precious and self-indulgent. But with Broderick doing the talking, we really get the impression that we’re being taken into the confidence of a clever, self-mocking little rogue who has the kind of audacity most teenagers can only dream of possessing. And that, no doubt, is just the impression Hughes wants us to have.

In the Hughes tradition of obnoxious adults, we have Jeffrey Jones (of Amadeus) as Ed Rooney, the dean of students, a man who feels compelled to stifle Ferris’ free spirit. (Rooney, growling like a cornered bulldog, vows: “Fifteen years from now, when he looks back on the ruin his life has become, he’s going to remember Edward Rooney!”) Jones is a great comic actor, and he plays this cartoonish villain for every laugh he can get. Indeed, after a while, he begins to engage our sympathy, much like Wile E. Coyote. But, again like Wile E. Coyote, he deserves every misfortune that comes his way.

Alan Ruck, who looks like he’ll grow up to be Edward Herrmann, makes a nice button-down foil for Broderick’s exuberant Ferris, while Mia Sara looks like she’s having more fun as Ferris’ girlfriend than she ever had in the ill-starred Legend. Jennifer Grey (daughter of Joel Grey) plays Ferris’ sister with the right degree of seething outrage. Better still, she shines brightly in an absolute gem of a scene with the unbilled Charlie Sheen. Cindy Pickett and Lyman Ward are amusing as Ferris’ trusting -- and, apparently, wealthy -- parents. (Ferris always seems to have a wad of cash at his disposal.) And Edie McClurg has some screamingly funny moments as a ditzy school secretary who misplaces pencils in her thickly hairsprayed coiffure.
 
There are probably a few more things I could say about Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but the movie has inspired me, so I’ll end the review here. Now, let’s see, where did I put that instruction book for setting up my hammock?