Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Matthew Broderick)

(Amazon UK link)

I’m pretty sure we saw the film ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ at the cinema, shortly after it was released in the summer of 1986. We thought it amusing, if exaggerated and unrealistic in places. It stayed in my mind as a 1980s classic, and when we first started collecting DVDs about fifteen years ago, it’s one that I bought inexpensively.

However, as far as I recall, we never actually watched the DVD, although our sons probably did. But last night, wanting something light weight and not too lengthy to watch, we decided to see it. I recalled that it was about a teenager who took an unauthorised day off school, but not much more. My husband remembered something about a red car…

My first surprise on watching it was that Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) looks so young. The actor must have been in his mid-twenties when the filming was done, but Ferris is only supposed to be seventeen or eighteen - in his last year at an American high school. He could have passed for fifteen or sixteen, in my opinion.

Some of the film is narrated by Ferris, directly to camera, as he explains some of the way his mind works. He’s a young man of ingenuity, able to hack his way into computers (admittedly rather basic ones at that period), and also to anticipate various other people’s reactions to his own actions. We first meet him as he is pretending - quite realistically - to be sick, insisting that he has to go to school while his parents tell him he must stay home. His sister Jean (Jennifer Grey) knows perfectly well what is going on, and is annoyed with him, but doesn’t give him away.

Once everyone else is out of the house, Ferris leaps into action. He persuades his friend Cameron to drive him, and fools the school into releasing his girlfriend Sloane for the day. He is highly manipulative, but in such a friendly, charming way that people can’t resist him… and Ferris seems to fall on his feet every time he pushes the boundaries. Of course it’s meant to be humorous, and his luck and charm are exaggerated in places. But we know of one or two people with this kind of personality - and, in general, remarkable luck - so could see that he might well have been based on a real person.

There’s a lot of slapstick, some situational humour, and the ongoing tension of wondering whether or not Ferris and his friends are going to get away with their increasingly risky behaviour. The school principal, Mr Rooney, is shown as an archetypical bad guy, not merely hoping to see justice done, but determined to make life miserable for Ferris. While I could see his point, initially, of not wanting someone to get away with playing hooky so often, he is so nasty - albeit in a comic way, at times - that it was hard to do anything other than root for the rule-breakers.

The school is shown as extremely tedious, with the most boring lessons, students half asleep or involved in different activities while teachers drone on. I hope that part, at least, was unrealistically exaggerated. But it made it easier to support Ferris, who probably learned a great deal more in his day off than he would have done in school.

There’s a far more serious theme too, in that of Cameron, an unhappy, chronically ill young man who has missed far more school than Ferris has, and who - as become increasingly obvious during the film - has a sad and neglectful family life. There’s a dramatic scene at the end that would horrify some car enthusiasts, but it is the start of something more positive, although we don’t get to see the outcome.

The actors were very well-cast, the pace excellent, and we both enjoyed the film very much. It’s rated 15 in the UK, which seems rather high by today’s standards; there’s some strong language and innuendoes, but they are not excessive. There’s nothing explicit, and the violence is minor and infrequent. The US rating of PG-13 is more appropriate in my view; I expect that nowadays it would be rated 12 in the UK, or even PG.

There are some extras, made about twenty later when the DVD was produced. It was interesting to see some of the cast look back on the making of the film, but it was more reminiscence than anything particularly engaging.

Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews