ROONEY, YOU'RE AN A**HOLE!!!!! (Ferris Bueller's Day Off (DVD))

Member Name: ross1979

Product:	Ferris Bueller's Day Off (DVD)
Date:	09/08/01 (202 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funny, Depth

Disadvantages: None

'Life moves pretty fast - If you dont stop and take a look around once in a while, you could miss it!' How true is that?

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) is one of the most innocent yet hilarious films ever made. It is a sweet, warm-hearted comedy about a teenager who skips school so he can help his best friend win some self-respect. The therapy he has in mind includes a day's visit to Chicago, including trips to the Sears Tower, the Art Institute, the Board of Trade, a parade down Dearborn Street, etc.

The film stars Matthew Broderick as Ferris, a bright high school student from the North Shore who fakes an illness so he can spend a day in town with his girlfriend, Sloane (the astonishingly beautiful Mia Sara) and his best friend, Cameron (Alan (Ruck). His advice for faking out the parents is legendary ('clammy hands, its a good non-specific symptom'......'its a bit childish but so's high school!')

At first, it seems as if skipping school is all he has in mind - especially after he talks Cameron into stealing his dad's restored red Ferrari, a car the father loves more than Cameron himself, and if you are a car fan, you can see why! But poor Cameron feels neglected and suffers mental problems as a result - he is convinced he is dying ('have you any idea what my diastolic is?')

The majority of the film is a lighthearted excursion through the Loop, including a German-American Day parade in which Ferris leaps aboard a float, grabs a microphone and starts singing "Twist and Shout" while the marching band backs him up. The teens fake their way into a fancy restaurant for lunch, spend some time gawking at the masterpieces in the Art Institute and go to a baseball game while leaving their prestige motor with a cheap inner-city garage.

There is one superb moment when the teens visit the top of the Sears Tower, lean forward and press their foreheads ag
ainst the glass, and look straight down at the tiny cars and little specks of life far below, and begin to talk about their lives. This introduces the buried theme of the movie, which is that Ferris wants to help Cameron gain self-respect in the face of his father's materialism.

"Ferris Bueller" was directed by John Hughes, the philosopher of adolescence, whose credits include "16 Candles," "The Breakfast Club" and "Pretty in Pink." In all of his films, adults are strange, distant creatures who love their teenagers, but fail completely to understand them. That's the case here also: All of the adults, including a bumbling high-school dean Mr. Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), are dim-witted and one-dimensional. Mr. Rooney is conned by a much sharper and wittier Ferris into believing that his girlfriend's grandmother is dead, so she can take the day of school. It is superb to watch Rooney get flustered and go absolutely mad at the antics of our young hero ('Rooney, you're an a**hole!')

The movie's solutions to Cameron's problems are pretty simplistic. But the film's heart is in the right place, and "Ferris Bueller's Day off" is worth taking time out of your life to reflect on.

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