We went to a museum. We saw priceless works of art. We ate pancreas!

[sovay]

Brief notes on Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1987), the midnight showing of which derspatchel and I just got back from. Matthew Broderick is extraordinarily charming; the film wouldn't function without him. Alan Ruck as Cameron Frye is marvelous and reminded me bizarrely of Joe E. Brown. The fourth-wall-breaking never wears out its welcome.¹ I am not the target audience for '80's teen comedies. The jokes that were funniest to me were either the perfectly timed punch lines ("If you say 'Ferris Bueller,' you lose a testicle."–"Oh, you know him?") or the total left field moments, like the parking garage attendants and the Star Wars music. Whenever the film is focusing on its three teenage protagonists having what they think is an adult and sophisticated day—driving a classy car, eating at a fancy restaurant, visiting an art museum; crashing a parade float—it really works. Ferris' blithe magical realism coexists successfully with Cameron's depressive hypochondria; Mia Sara's Sloan turns out to be as effective a trickster in a tight spot as the boy she loves. Jennifer Grey's Jeannie is sympathetic even before she gets her heel face turn: I can't imagine living with a brother with the apparent power to bend reality to suit his slacking-off, either. Excepting the magnificent Edie McClurg, almost anything involving the adult characters falls cartoonishly flat. It's not really possible for Ferris to be caught and punished in this kind of movie, so the melodramatic suspense is broadly coy rather than clever; the comedy of authority figures running around behaving like buffoons has nowhere to go. The demolition of Rooney eventually started to remind me of how much I hated Home Alone (1990). So half the film is hilarious; the other half is just kind of there. I know how I would have rewritten the script, but I am not John Hughes and I've known that since I bounced off The Breakfast Club (1985). I want to rewatch WarGames (1983) now.

1. Ferris is a more benign manipulator, but the frequent addresses to the audience made me want to pair this movie with Ian McKellen's Richard III (1995). In any case, I can see exactly how a Broadway director could have remembered this film and thought of Broderick as How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying's J. Pierrepont Finch. It's that curling little cat-smile that is never smug; complacency would have been fatal to the character. His monologues are adorable. He's terrible at philosophy, but he is eighteen years old.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I liked this film a lot when I saw it back in the day, but since then there seem to be theories around that Ferris is a figment of Cameron's imagination - an aspect that had passed me by. On the other hand, whether these theories were up and running before Fight Club I'm not sure.

[sovay]

since then there seem to be theories around that Ferris is a figment of Cameron's imagination - an aspect that had passed me by.

. . . It's an interesting theory, but I don't believe it to be the case. Not enough of the movie is from Cameron's perspective, for starters.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen the movie, but I was always under the impression the other characters regard Ferris as a real person -- don't characters who turn out to be imaginary usually appear only in scenes with the person imagining them? The trope must be some equivalent to the "Fair Play" rules of mystery-novel writing.

[rosefox]

Yeah, just the scene where Rooney talks with Ferris's mother about his absences from school would be enough to scotch that theory.

[sovay]

The trope must be some equivalent to the "Fair Play" rules of mystery-novel writing.

Yes; all signs point to Ferris having an independent existence. He appears in scenes with non-Cameron characters, he appears in scenes by himself, Jeannie relates to him as her brother, the entire city of Chicago recognizes him by the end of the day . . . The figment/alter ego theory sounds neat, but doesn't hold story water. Ferris does help his friend move past his fear, but in the normal way, by existing. (And wrecking a car, as may be de rigueur in movies about Chicago.)

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Unreliable narrators (even *deliberately deceptive* narrators) are one thing, but there should probably be a rule that no more than one, maybe two characters can turn out to be figments of another character's imagination; and that the whole scenario can't turn out to be a figment without a really good excuse.

Apologies if this seems an idée fixe with me -- I was recently discussing on another thread my hatred for the related refrigerator moment where you realize that for a plot twist to be true, a character must, in several scenes, have been faking emotion/identity for the sole benefit of the fourth wall.

[sovay]

Apologies if this seems an idée fixe with me -- I was recently discussing on another thread my hatred for the related refrigerator moment where you realize that for a plot twist to be true, a character must, in several scenes, have been faking emotion/identity for the sole benefit of the fourth wall.

No, that seems like a reasonable thing to hate: it's not just a refusal to play fair with the audience, it's bad writing because in-story there's no reason for it. Refrigerator moment?

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Fridge Logic (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic) (warning: TVTropes link)

[elsmi.livejournal.com]

I always understood that theory to be a bit of just-for-fun stunt criticism, on par with the theory about Chewbacca and R2-D2 being the leaders of the rebellion (http://km-515.livejournal.com/746.html)...

[sovay]

I always understood that theory to be a bit of just-for-fun stunt criticism, on par with the theory about Chewbacca and R2-D2 being the leaders of the rebellion...

I hadn't seen that, either. Thank you for alerting me that I should not be trying to evaluate it seriously.