Review of Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) by Kobe R — 27 Sep 2013

The enthusiasm of John Hughes & Co. here is infectious (fourth wall breaking! fast car driving antics! impromptu musical numbers in the streets! an all-synthesizer cover of The Smiths at an art gallery! that last one is especially cool...), but it never completely overshadows the fact that there's a bit of a double standard at play here--we're encouraged to cheer on Ferris' duplicitous conniving and selfish scheming in the name of reckless youthfulness, while the allegedly nefarious Mr. Rooney earns our disdain for not being quite as skilled a deceiver (and, perhaps more importantly, for being an older one), which all seems to be enough justification to use his physical distress to get our laughs. It's all kind of a cheap cash-in on our romanticism of youth, our scorn for The Man, a deification of irresponsibility, and, maybe most of all, the power of protagonism. But does it qualify me as a curmudgeon if I can't help but feel uneasy about the unspoken answer to Cameron and Sloane's question, "What do you think Ferris is gonna do [after high school, that is]?" Not showing up suddenly becomes a pretty weak philosophy to hang a life on when you stop having someplace like public school where you're always supposed to be, and it starts to get a little bit questionable when all your stopping and looking around comes at the direct expense of others. Not only is there a sort of anti-intellectualism at play here with all this "school sucks" mentality (a contrariness seemingly for the sake of being contrary), but Ferris never really does opt out of the system, he just finds the most effective way to manipulate it to his own advantage, and he winds up being less a conscientious objector than a profiteer. The Cameron subplot, which directly interrogates all this selfish sort of materialism, provides the film with its most grown up moments and also its most emotionally resonant, but ultimately it feels a bit at odds with a lot of what's going on around it. Ferris essentially spends the movie making trouble for people snooty enough to have the audacity to try and do their job, and that kind of offhanded dismissal of institutions and notions of personal property would be more effective if it didn't always result in Ferris getting to drive with the fast car before it crashes or eat the five star lunch before the real sausage king shows up to claim his reservation. For all of Broderick's charm and Hughes' bonkers formal energy and gonzo narrative digressions, all of this carpe diem-ing doesn't hold up to much scrutiny, and, when one stops to look around at what these guys are really saying (intentionally or otherwise), one can't help but notice that Ferris is basically just the flipside of the coin he espouses to hate--an essentially dishonest, opportunistic, and, when you get right down to it, sort of cynical kind of hedonist. When you think of it like that, maybe he'll wind up in business like his old man after all--if he can somehow manage to graduate first.

(That's all a pretty scathing review for a movie I actually enjoyed quite a bit.).