Sometimes watching films can be an unrewarding experience. Though I try my best to finish every film I start, a couple of them always manage to squeak through, final scene unseen. And it is not because all these films are terrible – far from it. Before the semester began, I looked forward to trying my luck on three films: John Hughes’ “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” and Julie Taymour’s “Frida.” The first time I saw these three films, they all rubbed me the wrong way; I could not press eject fast enough. With “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” I could not understand how a student could derive joy from jumping class. And I really do not understand why we should care if he did. Last weekend, I finished “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” My opinion of it hardly changed: this film lingers in its dreariness and chokes on its self-conceit. For those privileged few who are unacquainted with “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” it concerns Bueller, a popular high school senior who skips school by pretending to be sick. After deceiving his parents, cajoling his hypochondriac friend and provoking the principal of his high school, Bueller cooks up a trip around town accompanied by his hot cheerleader girlfriend and his nervous sidekick. Unfortunately for Bueller, since the school requires a student to repeat a year if the student has at least nine absences, his principal is hot on Bueller’s tail to catch him in the act and use him as an example for those impressionable young ones. Before proceeding any further, I hasten to add that I cannot speak with nostalgia about how “Ferris Bueller” affected my life – I am looking at it not with the eyes of a boy but with those of a man. Though the film is mildly amusing, it is far from boring. It held my attention for its entirety, providing me with a keyhole view on what a high school student would assume to be his idea of having a nice time. If that does not seem like a wholehearted endorsement, it is the best I could come up with. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” not only fails to portray high school in an engaging manner, it trips on its own pretensions by having an unremarkable actor in the guise of Bueller address the audience. Presenting high school – or any other educational institution – on film can be tricky business. This is because school life contains more vignettes than real drama – a couple of tales to tell but not much to write about. To overcome this plot difficulty, filmmakers normally make the picture around numerous characters and varied circumstances. For example, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Dazed and Confused” both focus on a mass of students as they embark on their final days in school. Both films employ cinematic types that are easily recognized and just as easily caricatured: surfer guys, geeks, jocks, cheerleaders, etc. So while they may not be the most artistically-minded films around, they do provide simple-minded entertainment. “Ferris Bueller” instead relies on one protagonist, who we have no affinity for except on the word of other characters in the film. Bueller comes off as an adolescent’s wet dream. And like all dreams, the fantasy disappears when reality arrives. As much as I agree with Bueller’s quip that “life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it,” I wonder if climbing the world’s tallest building, eating in a fancy restaurant, jumping on a parade float or watching a game at Wrigley Field, is so daring or exceptional. Can’t this excursion be done during weekends? The director understands his predicament. So he tries to get us involved by having Bueller break the fourth wall. Sometimes, this works – try “High Fidelity.” Most times, it does not. To successfully come off, it needs an actor capable of holding attention; Matthew Broderick was not the person. I found him unbelievable as a high school student, lacking the devilish exuberance a kid having such an escapade should have. The film will undoubtedly remain a cult classic, but I found it flat-footed, lacking in content or imagination, with nothing to say about real teenage rebellion. I guess the title is spot on: maybe it was Ferris Bueller’s day off.
—-Contact Freke Ette at [email protected]