In this piece I’ll argue that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off has enjoyed a cult status among American cinema that, in my opinion, is baffling and undeserved. If one searches carefully enough he or she will find a small but substantial current of defiance against the movie some many claim to love. Ultimately, the movie is at best subpar, perhaps roaming the area of what I consider to be a “good” movie, but it is certainly not a “great” or “timeless” film by any stretch of the imagination.

Before we begin to dissect this mediocre film, we must first understand why it has enjoyed its beloved status in the American cannon of exceptional films. It won’t take too long to figure out that people love this movie for basically two reasons. The first is that every viewer wants to imitate Ferris. The second is simply nostalgia. This film invokes a feeling of what could have been and invites its viewers into a world without consequences.

Most viewers, regardless of age, become enthralled with this movie because they, in short, dream of doing what Ferris Bueller did. This is what writer Alan Siegel calls the “myth of Ferris Bueller”.

Ferris Bueller perpetrates a harmful lie. A lie that states that those who are cunning enough, those who are ruthless, and those who continuously deviate from the societal norms are rewarded with the spoils of victory, namely a bowl of chicken soup from his naïve mother Mrs. Bueller, along with some added perks on the side.
Like a con-man, Ferris sells his too-good-to-be-true brand of Americana. The culminate result of his actions is reached when Cameron sees his father’s most prized possession roll through a glass case on its descent into off of a cliff.

Cameron’s father is presented as an overbearing domineering man though he never appears on screen. Ferris likens Cameron’s house to a “museum”. By the end of the movie, Cameron learns not to live in fear of his father. Of course, after obliterating his car, one is prone to wander whether his father’s fear was justified in the first place. In other words, his father was not, as the movie depicts him, being unreasonable to prohibit his son from using his car.

The characters in general, in this movie are unexciting. I never found myself drawn to a certain character. They never possessed any qualities that made the audience empathize with their plight. A movie reviewer once said that the movie is “dripping in classism.” The movie never seems to develop beyond the fact that, at its core, it never becomes anything more than three, suburban privileged kids running around downtown Chicago. Compare Ferris, someone who is still upset over receiving a computer instead of a car for his birthday, with John Bender from the Breakfast Club. Bender is the product of a broken home, and is a nice “round” character that allows audiences to connect to the real world (both movies, by the way, were produced by the same director John Huges).

The antagonist in the film is undoubtedly Principle Ed Rooney. However, I believe he represents the toils of everyday life. The villain isn’t a universal evil, or a monster, or any other dark force. He actively tries to fight against the very system that has benefited him.

In a porous effort to move beyond the premise of the plot, the film throws out lines that are meant to be thought provoking or profound, but upon closer examination fall short. Gems like “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”. Despite being blatantly obvious it adds a certain corniness (not that corniness is always bad) to the film that should not be disregarded. Even the scene where the camera zooms in on a painting in the Art Institute of Chicago comes off as tacky and unoriginal.

Despite these notable flaws, this movie isn’t terrible. It shines in certain moments. For example, Ben Stein’s monotonous roll call is “a passive-aggressive rallying cry” (Alan Siegel) for educators everywhere, and his performance as a whole adds some much needed genuine humor to the film. However, if one considers the totality of this film, and considers the plot holes and logical fallacies found within it, I think they’d agree that perhaps this movie is not what everyone says it is.