Posted on 06/14/2011 7:15:36 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Twenty-five years after its release, John Hughes's most-loved work doesn't hold up
Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which hit theaters 25 years ago this week and will soon be re-released on Blu-Ray and DVD, inspires a special kind of reverence in suburbia. "Today you'd be hard-pressed to find an American high-school yearbook that doesn't quote somewhere in its pages Ferris Bueller's view on existence," author Susannah Gora writes in her book You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, And Their Impact on a Generation. Before going with a bromidic Bob Dylan lyric, I almost made my own senior quote, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." In hindsight, it seems about as profound as a fortune cookie. I guess being 17 is a good excuse for banality.
Adults, on the other hand, should know better. Yet they too remain fixated on Ferris, a role that earned Matthew Broderick a Golden Globe nomination. The line, "Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?", delivered by Ben Stein's monotonic economics teacher, is American educators' go-to, passive-aggressive rallying cry. References can also be found outside the classroom. This February, Baseball Prospectus writer Larry Granillo dedicated two blog posts to determining the precise Cubs game Ferris and his pals attended while playing hooky. An episode of the FOX medical drama House that aired in March centered on a homeless guy who called himself Ferris Bueller. "I think," Juno director Jason Reitman says in Don't You Forget About Me, a 2009 documentary about the late Hughes, "Ferris Bueller's a perfect movie."
A quarter century after its release, the explanation for why Ferris Bueller's Day Off remains a pop-culture touchstone is simple.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
yes, the 80’s were a wonderful time to grow up, Reagan was in office, we had just come out of a horrible end of the 60’s and 70’s. I’m hoping for just a touch of that for my daughter with the next President (and maybe even some 80’s hair styles).
Definitely.
My mom who if had lived would be 86 and she loved that movie would watch it when ever it came on
And my mom was no simpleton
The perfect movie for any tired, deployed slacker who has crawled inside his fartsack and tied a Gordian knot on the drawstring.
I loved the movie, it was fun. Isn’t that enough sometimes?
Gotta disagree with everyone here. This movie was a complete waste of time. John Hughes made some good movies. This wasn’t one of them.
Ok
Election was pretty dam funny.
Okay, bring back the 80s, I’m down with that.
But you’ll find the REAL BABES from old studio system back in the 40’s, like Lauren Bacall and Veronica Lake, for instance.
Maybe they meant Broderick Crawford.
In the 80’s, it was the kids who outsmarted the adults. Ferris, War Games, ET.
In the 90’sand beyond it was Clueless and Dude, wheres my car.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
People love that movie, but I couldn’t even finish watching it. A teacher who has resentment against a high school girl raped by his best friend? It seemed awful to me.
Are we talking about the same movie?
I heard that you were feeling ill,
Headache, fever, and a chill.
I came to help restore your pluck,
Cause I'm the nurse who likes to *slam*
Yep. And you're right about the music.
Two words, "Ally Sheedy."
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