Ferris Bueller's Day Off

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According to most, that dear old month of January brings those winter blues to their peak. The weather is gloomy, and often gets in the way of your plans, your New Years resolution is still in its most challenging, beginning phases, and things just go back to the way they were after a lovely week of Christmas and New Years. Thus, I thought I'd cover what I like to call "comfort food" films. And that's exactly as that sounds. These are warm movies that we remember fondly, triggering a nostalgia for that point in your life when you didn't have to think about anything in the winter other than your school's Christmas break, tobogganing, snow men, snow forts, etc.

Let's kick it off with a consistent go-to for me over the years. 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' comes to us from director John Hughes, whom it could be debated, understood teenagers of the time better than anyone out there. This one always made my Top 5 as long as I've been familiar with his movies, mostly due to its subject matter. It essentially provides a rough guide as to how to fake sick and stay home from school so you can hang out with your friends. And yeah, it sounds like a terrible thing, but what kid didn't watch this and think "wow, this movie speaks to me", seeing it as a movie that is understanding your feelings more than just an instruction book.

Ferris (Matthew Broderick) fakes sick one beautiful day, and wants to use the time he has to hang out with his lovely girlfriend, Sloane (Mia Sara) and best friend, Cameron (Alan Ruck). He manages to get Sloane out of school with a pretty extreme phone call, and manages to get an actually sick Cameron out of bed, mostly to use his Dad's 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California for the day. So really and truly, Ferris is a bit of an asshole, and I like to look at this movie in a different, but still positive light nowadays. But more on that in a bit.

In the meantime, we have one of those situations where the villain is just doing his job. Albeit to an extreme, but when you think about it, he's more in the right than Ferris is here. We just side with Ferris because he's the kid we're relating to, and Principal Edward Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) is the symbol of authority trying to bring us down. It's an interesting watch to try out as a child as well as an adult. It offers different perspectives, and in its own way, it's kinda timeless like that.

Going back to watching in a different light, I say that the best way to get the most out of it is to make it Cameron's movie. He gets the most development throughout the film, learns a few things in the end, and in one day, his friends who are more or less being jerks to him ultimately teach him to be a different kind of person. The same could be said watching it as Ferris' sister, Jeanie's movie. She spends the whole thing by herself with an attitude because Ferris seems to get away with murder. But then she has a conversation with then newcomer Charlie Sheen, and things change a bit for her.

These perspectives keep it fresh, and frankly, tell a bit of a better story than just "here's how you skip school successfully". Truth be told, there's not much development to Ferri's character. It's there, but it's not quite as abundant as Cameron's or Jeanie's (although Jeanie is pretty tertiary here). Though, let's all be honest, as kids, we leaned much more towards Ferris, who is also responsible for giving us the post-credit scene that 'Deadpool' parodies.

So, whether you haven't seen it at all, or it's been a long time, I say it's worth a watch. Despite the overall subject matter, this is still very much a feel-good comedy. It's a quick and easy watch, great for a Sunday afternoon (actually this month's whole list is pretty good for that). 

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