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

[sovay]

One of my favorites from that era, definitely.

The half of it I liked, I really liked!

I think Breakfast Club was more of-its-moment, so if you weren't 16 that year, it's unlikely to be your movie.

I must have been close to it—I was in Life Skills class in high school. I was relatively indifferent to it until the final scene where the oddball girl gets a makeover and then it actually annoyed me.

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

I find I can trace my personal development by my reactions to that scene, based on whether I'm on the "oddball is the new normal" or "will someone please just SHOW ME how to be normal" beat of the pendulum. *wry*

[sovay]

I find I can trace my personal development by my reactions to that scene, based on whether I'm on the "oddball is the new normal" or "will someone please just SHOW ME how to be normal" beat of the pendulum.

With me, it was the way the film insisted on its five teenage protagonists being seen and appreciated for themselves as opposed to societal labels or emblematic stereotypes, except that all of a sudden it turned out it was not possible to appreciate Allison for herself without changing her entire presentation: as if the real Allison is a "normal" girl hiding under the weirdness, conventionally pretty, nicely made up, dressed like anyone else. Only after her transformation does anyone express interest in her. It really doesn't work for me.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

Only after [Alison's] transformation does anyone express interest in her. It really doesn't work for me.

I don't like the transformation either--I thought she looked just fine the way she was. Andy does pay attention to her when she still looks like her previous self, though, there's the bit where he follows her off into the corner and asks her about how her family treats her at home.

I always thought that moment was John Hughes' attempt to make their eventual getting together at the end of the movie feel a little more...earned? emotionally viable?...than just "Now she looks like a normal person, and Andy's a shallow jerk who would never have noticed her back when she looked like a freak". The problem is that it reads as though it's more about demonstrating that Andy's a good person than about Alison. In contemporary terms, the narrative rewards him for being a Nice Guy.

I wish the movie had given us a little more interaction between Bender and Alison. There's the dynamic between male and female rebellion, and there's the class difference (Alison's mention of a shrink and of having the options to run away to other places besides the streets always made it pretty clear to me that she comes from money), and I feel like there were a lot of possibilities there that Hughes either wasn't interested in or skipped over in favor of advancing the two romance plotlines.

...wonder if there's any point in my sticking that into a Yuletide request sometime. There's some very good fic for this movie, but it tends to focus on Bender and the other two guys. I wonder if one reason fic writers are less interested in Alison is because of the transformation storyline. :(

[sovay]

Andy does pay attention to her when she still looks like her previous self, though, there's the bit where he follows her off into the corner and asks her about how her family treats her at home.

I believe you: I saw the film once nearly twenty years ago! I just vividly remember not liking that ending.

always thought that moment was John Hughes' attempt to make their eventual getting together at the end of the movie feel a little more...earned? emotionally viable?...than just "Now she looks like a normal person, and Andy's a shallow jerk who would never have noticed her back when she looked like a freak".

I feel that anyone who cannot appreciate that parka she wears for at least half the film's runtime is a shallow jerk. That is one of the best unexpected coats on film until Hermann Gottlieb.

...wonder if there's any point in my sticking that into a Yuletide request sometime.

I don't see why not. Underexplored corners of fandom is exactly what Yuletide is for.

I wonder if one reason fic writers are less interested in Alison is because of the transformation storyline.

That would suck. I can see it happening. Change the paradigm!

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen Breakfast Club either, but I was annoyed by a similar thing in The Faculty -- the goth-punk, rumored-to-be-a-lesbian girl is seen at the end, after she and her fellow-students defeat the alien infestation, wearing pastels and holding hands with a male student (who'd also helped defeat the aliens.)

I can (grudgingly) handwave the relationship as "she's bi" or as "she was straight all along, teens just assume anyone oddly dressed must be gay and she refused to deny it because why should she have to;" but the sudden switch in presentation annoyed me in the same way Alison's transformation hit you.

I suspect Hollywood (Tim Burton excepted) uses Goth/Punk/Emo looks to signal that a character is bad/rebellious/unhappy, and therefore if they cease to be bad or unhappy, this must be signalled by "removing the disguise" and switching to the supposedly neutral state of mainstream dress.

[sovay]

a similar thing in The Faculty -- the goth-punk, rumored-to-be-a-lesbian girl is seen at the end, after she and her fellow-students defeat the alien infestation, wearing pastels and holding hands with a male student (who'd also helped defeat the aliens.)

I haven't seen The Faculty, but that sounds like something that would annoy me, yes.

I suspect Hollywood (Tim Burton excepted) uses Goth/Punk/Emo looks to signal that a character is bad/rebellious/unhappy, and therefore if they cease to be bad or unhappy, this must be signalled by "removing the disguise" and switching to the supposedly neutral state of mainstream dress.

I suspect you are correct. It would be nice sometime to see that subverted without the subversion being the entire point.