Blu-Ray Review: ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ Continues to Endure

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CHICAGO – John Hughes’s creative peak in the 1980s was brought about by a great deal of writing in a very small period of time. According to legend, Hughes wrote the script for his 1986 cult classic, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” in only seven days while under the threat of a writer’s strike. He was gifted at churning out films, but his prolific nature caused him to noticeably repeat himself.

Like “Home Alone,” the box office monster that ultimately tarnished Hughes’s career, “Bueller” is an infectiously silly exercise in wish fulfillment. It lacks much of the insight that fueled his influential portraits of adolescent hell (such as his lovely debut, “Sixteen Candles”), opting for a cartoonish battle of wits between a smart-aleck student, Ferris (Matthew Broderick), and his vengeful principal (Jeffrey Jones). The film often plays like a Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner cartoon crossed with a Chicago travelogue, but just when Hughes appears to have lost control of this throwaway lark, he delivers a moment of bracing honesty.

Blu-Ray Rating: 3.5/5.0

Consider the character of Cameron, played with wounded charm by Alan Ruck. He’s the only person in the film who registers as three-dimensional, primarily because he’s actually allowed to have the sort of issues that most teens his age face on a daily basis. His friend, Ferris, is the teen everyone wants to be. When he announces his name as if he were James Bond, the homage fits like a glove. He IS James Bond, in the sense that he always manages to stay one step ahead of the adults aiming to ruin his self-declared day off. Hughes’s heightened lens aims to view the world through the eyes of a cocky adolescent who naturally believes he is above it all. The terminally clueless adult characters are every bit as farcical as the drolly melodramatic score by Ira Newborn.

Broderick is a delightful screen presence, but he never truly seems to be a teenager, or any other flesh-and-blood organism of this planet. His character merely functions as the idyllic life force to jolt Cameron out of a crippling depression. Many of the earlier scenes require Bueller to speak directly into the camera, as he prepares to take Cameron and his girlfriend (Mia Sara) to the Windy City after ditching another tiresome day of boring classes. Broderick’s line delivery is so stilted that he might as well be reading off cue cards, but as the film progresses, Bueller’s gaze becomes oddly penetrating, as he begins to deconstruct the stagnant life of his lonely friend. The single best line in the film occurs when Bueller reflects on Cameron’s nonexistent love life, and the danger he risks by marrying “the first girl he lays.”

Alan Ruck and Matthew Broderick star in John Hughes’s 1986 comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Photo credit: Paramount Pictures

The scenes between Ferris and Cameron are so strong that they cause the rest of the picture to look even more silly in comparison. Jones’s principal is every bit as thick-headed as the burglars in “Home Alone,” while Bueller’s homemade contraptions of deception are no less elaborate than the booby-traps improbably devised by Macaulay Culkin. Another case of Hughesian déjà vu occurs in the subplot involving Ferris’s ever-brooding sister, played by Jennifer Grey, who just so happens to be dead ringer for Jean Louisa Kelly in “Uncle Buck.” When the uptight Grey is forced to chat with a druggie “criminal” (Charlie Sheen, who else?) they end up hitting it off just like Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson in “The Breakfast Club.” Several ensemble members score in bit parts, particularly Edie McClurg (the perky rental agent from “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”) as Jones’s secretary, who improvised her priceless line in which she refers to Bueller as a “righteous dude.” Ben Stein’s infamous “Bueller…Bueller…” classroom scenes are unforgettable primarily because of the thoroughly convincing expressions of his catatonic students. The film is no masterpiece and is certainly not without its flaws, but once Bueller begins lip-synching to The Beatles’s “Twist and Shout” while dancing atop a parade float, it’s literally impossible to resist getting swept up into the film’s wave of exuberantly escapist euphoria.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was released on Blu-Ray on August 2, 2011. Photo credit: Paramount Pictures

“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is presented in 1080p High Definition (with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio) and includes extras recycled directly from the film’s 20th anniversary edition. In fact, this disc is no different from the “Bueller…Bueller” Blu-Ray released a mere two years ago, save for the flashy fold-out map of the film’s Chicago locations. What’s sorely lacking here is the feature-length audio commentary that Hughes recorded for the 1999 DVD release. That would’ve been especially welcome in light of the director’s sudden death in 2009. The five leftover featurettes are reasonably diverting and skillfully balance archival footage with retrospective interviews, though any new offerings would’ve been a bonus.

Moviegoers who haven’t purchased “Bueller” (at all, or at the very least, within the last decade) will appreciate the extensive look at the film’s ensemble, where casting directors Janet Hirshenson and Jane Jenkins discuss their methods for choosing each role. They were on the lookout for an actor who would help Ferris rise above the level of an obnoxious brat, and had originally considered John Cusack for the role. Broderick had previous experience breaking the fourth wall onstage in “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and “Biloxi Blues,” where he starred opposite Ruck. Grey reminisces about falling for Hughes’s playfulness onset and his refusal to let actors worry about going over the top (he would often mimic the expressions he wanted the actors to make). One of the biggest behind-the-scenes surprises was how Lyman Ward and Cindy Pickett (who played Ferris’s parents) ended up becoming a real-life couple offscreen.

Hughes affirms that he wanted to make a film about the necessity of not taking oneself too seriously, but it’s clear in the eye-opening featurette, “The World According to Ben Stein” that the infamously monotone writer-turned-human caricature Stein takes Hughes’s film very seriously indeed. With his usual brand of wry self-aggrandizement, he compares elements of the film to the Declaration of Independence and the New Testament, while claiming that the film accurately reflects his conservative life philosophy: karmic forces carry winners along while leaving losers in the dust. “When people do what they want to do, it enriches other people’s lives as well,” says Stein, in classic trickle-down fashion. He does admittedly get in a couple lines, such as when he reveals that his one day of shooting “Bueller” was the happiest of his life, and that it gave him “the most giggles since I helped write Nixon’s resignation speech.”

By MATT FAGERHOLM Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com matt@hollywoodchicago.com