Ferris Bueller's Day Off

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"Ferris Bueller" redirects here. For the member of German techno band Scooter by the same name, see Scooter.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Theatrical release poster
Directed by John Hughes
Produced by John Hughes
Tom Jacobson
Written by John Hughes
Starring Matthew Broderick
Alan Ruck
Mia Sara
Jeffrey Jones
Jennifer Grey
Edie McClurg
Music by Ira Newborn
Arthur Baker
John Robie
Cinematography Tak Fujimoto
Editing by Paul Hirsch
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date(s) June 11, 1986
Running time 102 min
Country Flag of the United States United States
Language English
Budget $6,000,000 USD
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a 1986 comedy film written and directed by John Hughes who is a graduate of Glenbrook North High School where many of the movie scenes were filmed. It stars Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck, Mia Sara, Jeffrey Jones and Jennifer Grey. The film was released by Paramount Pictures on June 11, 1986.

The film follows high school senior Ferris Bueller, who, one spring day (after eight previous absences throughout the semester; nine total including this "day off"), decides to skip school again and spend the day in downtown Chicago with his girlfriend Sloane Peterson and his best friend Cameron Frye while creatively avoiding his school's dean of students Mr. Edward Rooney, his resentful sister Jeanie, and his parents. Bueller frequently breaks the fourth wall to explain to the audience his techniques and thoughts. In the opening scene, graphics appear onscreen illustrating his explanations.

Attorney and presidential speechwriter Ben Stein's appearance in the film as an economics teacher catapulted him into the film industry and made him a celebrity figure in the Hollywood entertainment arena.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Ferris Bueller is an irreverent high school senior from the fictional northern Chicago suburb of Shermer, Illinois, who decides to skip school (Glenbrook North High School, additional scenes filmed at the then closed Maine North High School) for a day on the town by pretending to be sick. We later learn that he has done this many times throughout the school year. He convinces his nervous hypochondriac friend Cameron to take his father's carefully restored 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California out for a spin, although Cameron's father has memorized the car's mileage. Ferris promises to erase any miles they put on the car by driving the car home in reverse. Masquerading as her father, Ferris springs his younger girlfriend Sloane from school on the premise that her grandmother has died.

Meanwhile, school dean of students, Edward Rooney, doesn’t believe Ferris's illness, as he has been tracking Ferris's many absences from school on his computer. Ferris remotely deletes these absences from the computer while Rooney watches helplessly. Lacking proof of the truancy, he sets out to catch him in the act, suffering injuries and humiliation in his quest. Ferris leaks a rumor to some 9th-graders that he is near-terminally ill, and he becomes the town's favorite son. A campaign by the students to "Save Ferris" is a running joke throughout the film. His twin sister, Jeanie, is outraged at Ferris's ability to defy authority unpunished and becomes as determined as Rooney to prove that her brother is lying. Her efforts lead to her being home when Rooney visits the house, which she misinterprets as an attempt to attack her. In response to the misinterpretation, Jeanie kicks Rooney in the face several times while screaming and running around the house, then she goes to the police. At the police station, she meets an attractive delinquent (Charlie Sheen) who tells her that she should get on with enjoying her life and stop resenting her brother.

The three friends enjoy a baseball game at Wrigley Field and dine at an upscale restaurant (with Ferris posing as Abe Froman, the sausage king of Chicago). Cameron and Sloane watch in awe as Ferris sneaks onto a float during the Von Steuben Day Parade to lip-sync "Danke Schoen" and The Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout". They also enjoy the view from the top of the Sears Tower and visit the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Board of Trade. In one of several running jokes, Ferris narrowly avoids meeting his father a few times. However, while the friends enjoy their day, two parking attendants borrow the Ferrari and take it on their own adventures, running up mileage dramatically in the process.

When the trio retrieve the car and Cameron spies the odometer reading, he enters a catatonic state. They return to Cameron's house, where Ferris and Sloane sit in the hot tub trying to figure out how to bring Cameron back to reality. Ferris muses to the audience about how little time is left in the school year and his concerns for Cameron's and Sloane's futures. Cameron does recover, but decides to scare his friends by falling into the pool. Ferris rescues him, feeling briefly angry and then relieved. Cameron laughs at him and reveals that he was faking it with the sarcastic quote "Ferris Bueller, you're my hero."

Ferris attempts in vain to reverse the Ferrari's mileage. Realizing that he will be caught, Cameron's rage comes to a head when he realizes how much contempt he has for his father. He realizes that his father cares more for the car than for his son. Cameron takes his rage out on the car by kicking dents in to the bumper and the front of the hood.

He finally calms down. He sees the minor damage that he has caused and accepts that he will now be forced to explain to his father what he did and why. He feels a weight lifted with the prospect of finally dealing with his father's coldness and distance.

However, the car remained in reverse throughout the beating and when Cameron rests his foot on the front bumper one last time, the car falls off the jack and bursts through the plate glass window in the back of the garage, landing with a crash at the bottom of a ravine. Ferris offers to take the blame since Cameron's father hates him anyway, but Cameron decides it is time to stand up to his father.

Ferris sees Sloane home and realizes that he is late and begins dashing home. The audience's last view of Sloane as Ferris disappears out of her view, shows her thinking out loud to herself that she will marry him someday.

The action returns to Ferris running through neighbors' backyards and hopping fences in an attempt to get home before his parents catch him out of the house (during this sequence, though in a hurry, Ferris briefly stops to greet a pair of female sunbathers). He arrives back home and narrowly escapes Rooney, thanks to Jeanie, who thanks Rooney for driving Ferris home from the hospital. Jeanie then reveals that Rooney left his wallet on the kitchen floor during his earlier visit, leaving Rooney with a vicious dog. Ferris manages to get into bed in time for his parents to check on him. The closing credits play beside scenes of Rooney receiving jeers and odd looks while riding the school bus. At a point during this scene, a girl sitting next to him offers a "gummy bear" claiming that they have been in her pocket and they're "real warm and soft". Rooney looks depressed and sickened as she says "Bet you never smelled a real school bus before". After the credits scroll, we see Ferris expressing his astonishment that the audience hasn't left the theater; Ferris then commands everyone to accept that the movie has ended and beseeches them to go home.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Reception

[edit] Critique

The film was received well by most critics. Famed movie critic Roger Ebert gave it 3 out of 4 stars.[1] It has a "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, having an aggregated critical film review score of 82%.[2] This movie ranked number 10 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "50 Best High School Movies".[3] The film was featured in the VH1 television show I Love the 80s which aired in 2002.

Broderick was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1987 for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

[edit] Rankings

As an influential and popular film, Ferris Bueller's Day Off  has been included in many film rating lists. This film is number 54 on Bravo's  "100 Funniest Movies", and came 26th in the British 50 Greatest Comedy Films  poll.

The film was short-listed by the American Film Institute as part of the AFI 100 Years... series celebration in the category of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs.

In 2000, readers of Total Film  magazine voted Ferris Bueller's Day Off the 23rd greatest comedy film of all time, and in 2005 an Empire  magazine article declared Ferris Bueller's Day Off the number one teen film of all time.

[edit] Box office

The film opened in 1,330 theaters in the United States and had a total weekend gross of $6,275,647, opening in second position to another teen comedy, Rodney Dangerfield's Back to School.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off's total gross in the United States was approximately $70 million. [4] It subsequently became the 10th highest grossing film of 1986. Compared to the lean budget of $6 million, it was viewed as a big success.[5]

[edit] Music

Paramount initially wanted to commission up-and-coming rock bands to write tracks for the film. Studio execs consulted with Welsh post-punk band The Alarm in April 1986, and the band subsequently cut the track "World on Fire" for the soundtrack. Paramount eventually dropped the project in favor of commercially-available songs.

Songs featured in the film include:

  1. "Love Missile F1-11" (Extended Version) by Sigue Sigue Sputnik
  2. "Jeannie" (Theme from I Dream of Jeannie)
  3. "Beat City" by The Flowerpot Men
  4. "Main Title / Rebel Blockade Runner ( From, 'Star Wars' )" by John Williams
  5. "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" (instrumental) by The Dream Academy (a cover of a song by The Smiths)
  6. "Danke Schoen" by Wayne Newton
  7. "Twist and Shout" by The Beatles (which charted again, 16 years after the Beatles broke up, as a result of its appearance in this movie (and a cover version by Rodney Dangerfield in his movie Back To School, which was released the same weekend as FBDO). It reached #23 in the U.S. Its parent album, The Early Beatles, would also rechart at #197). The version heard in the film includes brass overdubbed onto the original backing track, which did not go down well with Paul McCartney. (This is explained by Hughes on the DVD commentary.)
  8. "Radio People" by Zapp
  9. "I'm Afraid" by Blue Room
  10. "Taking the Day Off" by General Public
  11. "The Edge of Forever" by The Dream Academy
  12. "March of the Swivelheads" (a remix of "Rotating Head") by The (English) Beat
  13. "Oh Yeah" by Yello
  14. "BAD" by Big Audio Dynamite

No soundtrack was ever released for the film, as director John Hughes felt the songs would not work well together as a continuous album.

[edit] DVD releases

The film has been released on DVD twice - the original DVD release, and the newer Bueller... Bueller... Edition. The original DVD, like most Paramount films released on DVD for the first time, had very few bonus features. It did, however, feature a commentary by Hughes. The later release has several more bonus featurettes, but does not contain the commentary track the earlier DVD release had.

The Bueller... Bueller... Edition, however, has multiple special features such as interviews with the cast and crew, along with a clip of Ben Stein's commentaries on the film's philosophy and impact.[5]

[edit] Filming locations

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • Part of the dance that the people on the stairs perform while Ferris sings Twist and Shout is the zombie dance from "Thriller".
  • The baseball game that is playing on the television while Mr. Rooney is searching for Ferris was played on Wednesday, June 5, 1985 at Wrigley Field. The Cubs were hosting the Atlanta Braves, and the score was tied 2-2 in the top of the 11th inning with the Braves batting. (In the movie, the fry cook tells Mr. Rooney that the score at that point was 0-0.) [1]
  • Ferris "hacks" into the school computer system to change his attendance record. This stunt was similar to one Matthew Broderick performed in the earlier film WarGames.

[edit] Legacy and homages

Since the movie's release, numerous references and spin-offs have occurred.

  • In 1990, it spawned an NBC sitcom television program, Ferris Bueller, starring Charlie Schlatter and Jennifer Aniston as Ferris and Jeanie respectively. The series lasted one season before being canceled.
  • Parker Lewis Can't Lose, a television sitcom program about a similarly charming and rebellious teenager, lasted for three seasons on the Fox network from 1990 to 1993.
  • House Party 4: Down to the Last Minute is essentially a remake of the movie performed by an all African-American cast, with the exception of the Rooney character which is played by a white female.
  • Rooney, a power pop band from California, got its name partly from the character Edward Rooney featured in the movie.
  • An homage to the show in an episode of the WB TV cartoon Johnny Test
  • Various homages to Ferris Bueller's Day Off appear in Family Guy:
    • In the Family Guy episode "The Tan Aquatic with Steve Zissou", one of Stewie's dying wishes is to go to the Art Institute of Chicago, at which point a sequence similar to that in Ferris Bueller's Day Off is played out.
    • In the Family Guy movie Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, the end sequence is a direct reference to the end chase scene of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, ending with the slow motion landing which, contrary to how it appears, is actually in real time. Realizing how much time he has wasted, Stewie says, "Hmm, probably shouldn't have milked that landing."
    • In the Family Guy episode "Movin' Out (Brian's Song)", Peter and Jillian say that it shouldn't be Ferris Bueller's day off, but it should be Ferris Bueller's day on, because "he did all the things he wanted to do".
    • In the Family Guy episode Peter's Got Woods, when Brian meets Shawna Parks, the same song from the scene when Jeannie tells the convict in the police station that most people call her Shawna plays.
  • The Danish sit-com Langt fra Las Vegas (Far from Las Vegas) features an episode called "DVD-Aftener" (DVD-Evenings) in which, Casper, the main character, and his best friend, Frank, do everything they can to convince Casper's girlfriend that Ferris Bueller's Day Off is the best movie ever.
  • In Veronica Mars episode "Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner", Veronica is speaking to her boyfriend who is off sick on the phone and asks, "Are you sick, or am I gonna see you singing 'Twist & Shout' on a parade float?"
  • The Simpsons episode "Bart Simpson's Day Off" is a spoof of the movie. The Simpsons episode "He loves to fly but he D'oh" reference Ferris Bueller with a Ferris Bueller clothing shop
  • Three tracks from the New Found Glory album It's All About the Girls begin with a line from Ferris Bueller.
    • Shadow - Recorder music followed by "Never had one lesson."
    • Scraped Knees - Principal Rooney "Grace ...GRACE!!"
    • JB - Ferris "Do you have a kiss for daddy?"
  • If you listen carefully you can hear "Danke Schoen" by Wayne Newton many times by three of the main characters
  • Ferris when he sings it in the shower
  • Rooney hums the song when he waits outside the door to Ferris's house
  • Jeanie sings the song while she walks down the stairs after she meets Charlie Sheen's character
  • The South Park episode "Super Fun Time" pays homage to the movie and features a parody of Ferris Bueller's "Life goes by pretty fast" speech delivered by Cartman to Butters.
  • In the Canadian TV Show, Being Ian, there is an episode called Ian Kelly's Day-Off. It is a direct spoof of the movie.
  • In the Robot Chicken episode Kiddie Pool two parking valets take KITT out for a joy-ride similar to the Ferrari scene.

[edit] Gallery

Southeast view of Long Beach, California home used as the Bueller family home.

East view 1 of the Ferris Bueller house.

East view 2 of the Ferris Bueller house.

Northeast view of the Ferris Bueller house.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Ebert, Roger. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. June 11, 1986.
  2. ^ Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Rotten Tomatoes.
  3. ^ 50 Best High School Movies. Entertainment Weekly.
  4. ^ [cite web | url=http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ferrisbuellersdayoff.htm | accessdate= 2008/5/6]
  5. ^ a b Ferris Bueller's Day Off - Bueller Bueller Edition

[edit] External links

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v • d • e
John Hughes
As Director and Writer
Sixteen Candles (1984)  · The Breakfast Club (1985)  · Weird Science (1985)  · Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)  · Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987)  · She's Having a Baby (1988)  · Uncle Buck (1989)  · Curly Sue (1991)
As Writer Only
National Lampoon's Class Reunion (1982)  · Mr. Mom (1983)  · National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)  · Nate and Hayes (1983)  · Pretty in Pink (1986)  · Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)  · The Great Outdoors (1988)  · Christmas Vacation (1989)  · Home Alone (1990)  · Career Opportunituies (1991)  · Dutch (1991)  · Beethoven (1992)  · Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)  · Dennis the Menace (1993)  · Baby's Day Out (1994)  · Miracle on 34th Street (1994)  · 101 Dalmatians (1996)  · Flubber (1997)  · Home Alone 3 (1997)  · Reach the Rock (1998)  · Just Visiting (2001)  · Maid in Manhattan (2002)
v • d • e
American films of the 1980s
1980 · 1981 · 1982 · 1983 · 1984 · 1985 · 1986 · 1987 · 1988 · 1989