Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (directed by John Hughes and starring Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck, and Mia Sara) is a quintessential coming-of-age story beloved by generations of teenagers. First released in 1986, Bueller remains a classic to this day. 

At first the premise of the movie seems simple: Ferris Bueller, golden boy of Chicago's Shermer High School, wants a day off from school, so he tricks his parents and convinces his friends to join him. But it is so much more than that. Ferris is who we all want to be - popular, handsome (well, at least in comparison to some other 80s stars - Judd Nelson, I'm looking at you), and incredibly lucky.

“How can we be expected to handle school on a day like this?” he asks, looking out at the perfect spring day before calling his best friend, Cameron, to come pick him up. Cameron, Ferris, and Ferris's girlfriend Sloane set off for a day of adventures. 
 

“The question isn't 'what are we going to do,'" Ferris says, "the question is 'what aren't we going to do?'” Throughout the day, Ferris and his friends go to the top of the tallest building in Chicago, visit the stock market, go to the art museum, con their way into an expensive restaurant, catch part of a Cubs game and a fly ball, and – in one of the most famous scenes of the movie – Ferris takes over a parade float, and what seems like the entire city dances and sings along. All this without being recognized by anyone. 

Ferris isn't just lucky, though – he's a visionary, inspiring almost everyone he meets. As Grace, the secretary to the principal, says, "Oh, he's very popular, Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude." As the movie goes on, the sphere of Ferris' influence becomes more and more clear; a collection is taken up in his school to buy him a new kidney, his home is overrun with flowers and balloons sent by well-wishers, a water tower is erected with the words "Save Ferris" emblazoned on it, and a headline in the local paper states Community rallies around sick youth. He can get you out of summer school, help you with your drug problem, and simply make you feel better about yourself.

This can especially be seen in Ferris's relationship with his straight-laced, hypochondriac, long-time best friend, Cameron Frye (played by Alan Ruck). Ferris provides an apt description of Cameron, saying, “Pardon my French, but Cameron is so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you'd have a diamond.”

In the beginning of the movie, Cameron is lying in his bed, convinced that he is too sick to go to school. Ferris calls and demands that Cameron come pick him up. At first Cameron refuses, but Ferris wins him over and soon they are working together to get Sloane, Ferris's girlfriend, out of school. Throughout the movie, Ferris pushes Cameron to take greater risks, pushing him out of his comfort zone. 

At the beginning of the movie, Cameron seems terrified of his parents, especially his father. When Ferris "borrows" his father's Ferrari, Cameron says that his father loves the car more than life itself. Throughout their adventures, Cameron frets about the fate of the car, sure that his dad will find out that he took it. 

By the end of the movie, however, when it becomes clear that he can't hide what he did, a sense of peace seems to come over Cameron. He says, "I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I'm going to take a stand. I'm going to defend it. Right or wrong, I'm going to defend it."

It seems to me that, more than anything else, this is the message of the movie. Ferris always ends up on top, but the rest of us may feel that our lives are changing and we don't have anything to do with it. Everything may work out perfectly for Ferris, but Cameron shows us that sometimes you need to stand up for yourself.

~Maya