Saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the John Hughes movie about the kid who just happens to live in John Hughes's childhood house and sleep in John Hughes's childhood bedroom who has an amazing day when he skips school. This movie had been almost entirely spoiled for me before I saw it by think-pieces analyzing the film. It's a feel-good film for teenagers with the giant flashing message of "carpe diem." Its message gets a bit muddied by Ferris taking advantage of nearly everyone he comes into contact with. Like a trickster god, sometimes this is for their own good (as with his sickly friend, Cameron) but often they're worse for tangling with him (see the effete waiter who dares to try to bounce Ferris from a swanky restaurant, or indeed the evil vice-principal who vilely expects kids to go to school.)
Ferris's manipulations of his parents and disrespect for other peoples' wishes frankly annoyed me. Okay, Cameron perhaps comes out of the film better, but even he is put into a catatonic stupor for a bit of the film. Ferris is played by the human puppy-dog Matthew Broderick, so I could never got all that mad at him but he's clearly the Mary Sue, the self-insert of John Hughes, who can do no wrong and whom everyone loves and oh boy does he know it. He is the Golden Child of the family.
I most identified with Ferris's eye-rolling sister, Jeanie, the scapegoat. She's called a "little asshole" by the spacey but lovable school secretary, her parents are quick to rebuke her, quick to praise Ferris. There's also a bunch of scenes of Jeanie's mounting frustration with how beloved Ferris is (which scenes are I guess played for laughs?) But this film has a message, even for Jeanies like me: "You oughta spend a little more time dealing with yourself and a little less time worrying about what your brother does." Which... okay, fair point. There are people like Ferris around in the world, who just keep cheating their way to the top, who smile as they spite you, but as long as I'm happy with myself, I don't need to "fix" those people, just get the hell away from them. This piece of perfectly mollifying advice comes from a drugged-up Charlie Sheen and is unfortunately delivered immediately after a bit of negging that ultimately sends Jeanie head-over-heels for this wonderful stranger. Yuck. The sexism of the 80s rears its ugly head once again.
So, okay. I did not like this film, but it's a perfectly good, perfectly fun movie. I have to admit, the film had essentially been ruined for me beforehand by a bunch of think-pieces about how Ferris' attitude mirrors that of the 80s Baby Boomers, how Jeanie is the spiteful Millennials, forever jilted out of their own bit of fun. This film promulgates a point of view and, like any point of view, it will clash with others who have different perspectives. I hardly came to this film with a fresh mind anyway, so feel free, lovers of this film, to completely disregard my thoughts. In the words of the Charlie-Sheen druggy truth-teller: "... It's just an opinion."
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