Film buffs, DVD collectors, and John Hughes fans beware! The "Bueller...Bueller..." edition DVD does not include the commentary track by writer/producer/director John Hughes which was included on the original 1999/2000 DVD release. It is a great commentary and is sorely missed from this edition.
I first saw "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" in 1991, and I've LOVED it ever since. I was so thrilled to see that Paramount was giving this classic film an upgraded DVD Special Edition. Upon seeing it however, I must say that I'm pretty disappointed. The extras, although enjoyable, are sorely lacking what they could and SHOULD be. Most of the film's major stars (and sometimes even minor ones like Kristy Swanson and Richard Edson) provide some updated interviews that are fun to watch. But, the bonus material and interviews featuring Mia Sara are all from 1986! She obviously CAN'T be that busy these days, so doesn't it make sense that an updated interview with her could have been included?
Also, the shooting script for this movie contains MANY deleted scenes and dialogue, some of which were a GREAT read and are bound to have been filmed. Ferris going through the house looking for money in some STRANGE places (all while the Pink Floyd tune "Money" was playing), as well as Cameron's dad seeing his 1961 Ferarri being driven through Chicago's streets by the two parking garage employees would have been GREAT to see. However, the ONLY deleted scene we get here is a behind-the-scenes version of the waiter at Chez Qui telling the trio that the food they were eating was pancreas (which of course was referred to later by Ferris in the taxi). No true special edition DVD should be without a deleted scenes section. VERY disappointing.
Next, this edition (like the original) does NOT include a theatrical trailer. It's rare for even a bare bones DVD not to include at least one trailer, but nearly UNHEARD of for a special edition! It's bound to still exist, and I can't beleive that it's THAT hard to find that they could not have dug it up for this "special" edition.
Finally, the original DVD, while lacking a trailer, DID include a GREAT feature-length commentary track by writer/director John Hughes. However, that commentary track is NOT included here! That was either a severe oversight or a downright mean move by Paramount. How hard would it have been to reproduce it here? In effect, its omission forces anyone who bought the original DVD and wants to upgrade to the special edition to keep the original instead of selling or trading it, all because they want to retain the commentary. Paramount should have at least made it possible that owning this new DVD would provide the most complete "Ferris" experience presently possible by itself, but without the original's commentary it doesn't.
In summary, if you bought the original DVD, then I advise you to keep it and just rent this new version to give the special features a look. Save the rest of what you would otherwise spend on this to put towards something more worthwhile. If you have NOT bought the original DVD however, then this would be a worthwhile purchase to own the extras that were not present on the original. But, do rent the original to give a listen to that AWESOME commentary track by John Hughes.
Buy Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Bueller... Bueller... Edition) (1986) Now
I am a teenager. I still enjoy(?) the joys(?) of high school. And let me say that Ferris Bueller's Day Off is still pertinent, as well as enjoyable.
I've seen the ending numerous times on TV, but this very night I decided to watch the whole thing. I rented it with a friend and loved it. Tomorrow I will go out and buy the DVD.
John Hughes was one of the precursors of such great writer-directors as Kevin Smith, and this film is evidence. It may have different focuses and some might find this difficult to interpret, as some reviews have said.
I say "Bull." This film captures high school. Even if all the teachers aren't as boring, the administration is still spreading the same lies that the principal character does in the film. He tries for authority and only pulls off incompetence.
With humor, light youthful cynicism, and carefree but intelligent views on life, I can attest to Ferris's own accuracy. I may not be as successful, but I see myself as a Buellerist(even if it wasn't intended).
So what if the movie ends seriously? That's what high school is! There're good times, hilarious times. And then there's learning who you are. Coming to terms. I was moved by Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In a world where accuracy often means disgusting, hack films like American Pie, this movie captured school days masterfully. Films that take the act of growing up and make it a sick joke are insulting, in my opinion. American Pie featured the darker side of growing up. People who are self-centered and petty. What a life, to start in such a way. Ferris Bueller is shown to be human and moral as he speaks about his friends, however. His analyses are wonderful, and caring while not being sugar-coated. The film was true but tasteful, succinctly and accurately showing the trials of growing up.
It's over-the-top, but anyone who was interesting in high school(and childhood in general), I'm sure, can attest to memories that seem larger-than-life. While it may be difficult to watch Ferris Bueller run up slides and jump on trampolines all to get home with a serious eye, one must admit that when one looks back at school, some things are like that, even if only in your mind.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off works on levels that only one who is or has been young can appreciate.
Read Best Reviews of Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Bueller... Bueller... Edition) (1986) Here
Part 1: The Movie
If the measure of a film's popularity is how many times you've seen it, then Ferris Bueller's Day Off is my favorite movie. I've seen it 16 times: 13 in the theatre during its original run, once on videotape, twice on a recently purchased DVD (once each with and without the director's commentary track).
Plot: One fine day toward the end of his senior year in high school, a young man named Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) ditches school and, with best friend Cameron Frye (Alan Ruck) and girlfriend Paige Peterson (Mia Sara) heads for the big city seeking adventure. Beneath surface events, Ferris' "day off" is a last ditch rescue mission designed to save Cameron's soul. This is his last chance to help Cameron, because after this school year's over they'll go to separate colleges and, effectively, a friendship that's endured since the fifth grade will be over, Cameron will be beyond Ferris' reach and aid.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off has an elegantly simple, effective story structure, a classic example of separate plotlines that move concurrently, then tie themselves together at the end. There are two plot threads in this movie: (1) The story of what Ferris, Cameron and Paige do during the day off, and how these characters, primarily Cameron, are affected and changed by it. (2) The attempts of Ferris' sister Jean and Dean of Students Edward R. Rooney to expose Ferris. At the end of the movie, the two plotlines converge and resolve each other when Ferris, Jean and Rooney come together at last, and it's Jean, changed by the events of her own "day off," who finally saves Ferris from Rooney.
Matthew Broderick plays Ferris, for all his fast talk and con artist ways, as really the most innocent character in the movie, almost childlike in his belief he can accomplish anything. Ferris Bueller is an ultimate refutation of one of the great archetypes of comedy, The Fool.
The Fool is a person of childlike innocence, who naively believes he can accomplish anything, and our amusement comes from watching him fail. The classic example of The Fool is Charlie Brown. For decades, Lucy Van Pelt said to him, "Come on, Charlie Brown, kick the football, I won't move it." Time after time, he fell for it. When Lucy swiped the ball out of the way at the last moment and he went flying through the air to crash down on his back, we laughed and said to ourselves, "What a moron! I'd never be tricked like that." We felt good about ourselves by contrast. The thing is, our amusement at The Fool is essentially meanspirited and soul-deadening. The Fool says to us, "You can't win. The game is fixed. Any belief in yourself, that you can accomplish wonders, is false and foredoomed to failure." What Ferris Bueller says to us is, "If you believe in yourself....you can accomplish anything." Then he goes ahead and does exactly that, right before our eyes.
I first saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off in 1986 at the Ventura Boulevard Cinema in the San Fernando Valley. It played there for, like, four or five months. It was incredible. People simply didn't get tired of seeing it, thus the long engagement especially by LA standards where movies tend to be there and gone. Though Matthew Broderick's portrayal of Ferris is obviously the linchpin that holds the movie together, what really made the film for me, bringing me back to see it time and again, was Alan Ruck as Cameron Frye. Without getting into a display of emotional scars here, let's just say that while I admired Ferris, I identified strongly with Cameron. Ferris is the kid we all wished we could be. Cameron is the kid so many of us really were. When Cameron explodes all over the Ferrari, he's expressing the rage for all of us.
It's a wonderful fantasy there could be such a friend as Ferris, who could see our (Cameron's) pain, would move heaven and earth to help him, and the person would find the strength to take advantage of it. There's a bit of a messiah complex to Ferris Bueller, a desire to save those he deems worthy of salvation. I'm sure one of the reasons he's been friends with Cameron for so long is that Cameron so obviously needs help. Cameron Frye is a long running personal project for Ferris Bueller, and one of the engines driving Ferris' actions in the movie is the realization he's running out of time, if he wants to effect lasting, positive change in Cameron's life it's got to be NOW. My favorite moment of the film, really THE pivotal moment, is when Cameron says, "No. I'll take the heat." And sitting there in the theatre, I smiled and whispered, "Good for you."
Part 2: Cast and Characters
The four main characters, Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick), Cameron Frye (Alan Ruck), Paige Peterson (Mia Sara) and Edward R. Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) are perfectly cast. Really, all four actors do such marvelous work it's impossible to imagine anyone else in these roles.
Of Matthew Broderick's portrayal of Ferris Bueller, what can I say? Wonderful. Beyond that, any poor words of mine couldn't do his work here justice. For there it stands, magnificent in its own right. See the movie, you'll know what I mean.
For all the talk I've heard over the years of Ferris being "the perfect kid," he's hardly a perfect person. There are aspects to his personality that aren't particularly admirable. He's deceitful and manipulative, probably a compulsive liar. When things don't go his way he becomes aggressive and abusive, shown most extremely when he slaps Cameron. But Ferris does have many good qualities. His lies are frequently in the service of the underdog, his deceptions designed to punish those who really have it coming. While Ferris manipulates those around him in the movie, most notably Cameron, he justifies it by saying it's really for Cameron's own good. From what we see in the film, he's absolutely right.
It's interesting to note that, based on the director's commentary, I've always seen Ferris as being a much nicer person than his creator does. One of Ferris' most impressive qualities is a complete lack of snobbishness. We see from Ferris' home life his parents are solidly middle class. Cameron's family is rich. Paige, by her class and polish, was probably born with a silver spoon in her mouth, too. But Ferris can be friends with a white trash greaser like Garth Volbeck (Charlie Sheen's druggie character) as easily as a rich kid like Cameron. He simply doesn't see any reason he shouldn't. This total absence of classism is one of the things that wins Ferris such admiration among his peers. His friends at school go from the top of the social structure all the way to the bottom. When Grace, Rooney's secretary, lists all the various cliques at school that adore Ferris, and sums up, "They think he's a righteous dude," she's right. He IS a righteous dude. To paraphrase Kipling, all men count with him, but none too much. ["If" by Rudyard Kipling.] That whole "walk with kings nor lose the common touch" thing isn't an unattainable ideal with Ferris. It's who he is.
For all his prevarication, when Ferris realizes he must take responsibility for his actions, or even something not, strictly speaking, his fault, to protect a friend, he'll do it. Something else people admire about him. After the Ferrari goes though the window and into the ravine, this is the only time in the movie Ferris is scared. He knows this is bigtime. This isn't ditching school, it's the destruction of a $200,000 automobile. When he says to Cameron, "We'll tell your father I did it. I'll take the heat," he means it. When push comes to shove, when the rubber meets the road, Ferris is a stand-up guy.
Alan Ruck is amazingly good as Cameron Frye. All four leads seem chosen for their mobile, expressive features, but none more so than Ruck. I'm telling ya, the face of Plastic Man, folks. Ruck's features are so malleable he reminds me of a young Jim Carrey without the goofiness.
Mia Sara, as John Hughes says during the director's commentary, is a perfect Paige Peterson. This role required someone very pretty, very elegant, but also strong enough to tolerate and control Ferris Bueller. I would go further. Not only tolerate enjoy. There's a theory in psychology called relationship balancing, the idea we subconsciously look for a partner who's strong where we're weak. Thus these two people together form in essence one fully functional personality. Paige is stable, and quite up to keeping her cool in the face of Ferris' weirdness. When Ferris asks her, "You want to get married?" I'm sure at least part of the reason is to tweak her, to see how she reacts. She's completely unfazed, just takes it in stride. It makes sense a person with Ferris' chaotic lifestyle would be attracted to someone with her poise. But also, beneath that calm exterior, there's enough of a wild child to Paige she can truly enjoy Ferris, and pitch in wholeheartedly, a willing partner in crime to his schemes. Really, she's perfect for him.
Could anyone else on Earth have portrayed Edward R. Rooney as well as Jeffrey Jones? I think not. It's totally believable that Rooney and Ferris would loathe each other. Rooney is the sort of stupid, pompous, authoritarian control freak that a free spirit like Ferris would instantly, and correctly, recognize as a natural enemy. And vice versa.
These four actors, all arguably doing the best work of their careers, are the heart of this movie.
Part 3: The DVD
There's only one "extra" on the DVD. John Hughes' (writer and director of Ferris Bueller's Day Off) commentary track can be run with the movie. Much more so than many director tracks, there's some really good stuff here. For instance:
* Matthew Broderick and Alan Ruck worked extensively with each other on Broadway before doing Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which helps explain their easy chemistry. It's no stretch to watch these two guys react to each other, and believe they've been friends for years.
* The best bit of commentary, for my money, is when Hughes discusses the sequence set in the Art Institute of Chicago, which was a kind of sanctuary for him when he was in high school. The paintings in this scene are those that were his favorites. Hughes' tone of voice, the emotions he expresses during this scene, are really touching. Prior to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the interior of this building had never been filmed for a movie, and it was a big deal for Hughes to go back to this place that had been so important to him, and show people how beautiful it is.
* Charlie Sheen was only brought in for one day to play Garth Volbeck during the police station scene. With little or no time to rehearse, he burned up the celluloid anyway. If I can believe the Internet, Charlie stayed awake for 48 hours before shooting to give himself the proper strung-out look. In this scene he looks so much like his Dad at the same age it's eerie.
* The parade sequence was filmed during a real parade in downtown Chicago. This wasn't a situation where the street was cordoned off and filled with extras. The Ferris crew had a float in the actual parade. No one knew who they were. The crowd didn't know, probably the city fathers didn't know. When the music for "Twist and Shout" started blasting, totally of their own accord, people from the surrounding areas were drawn in, started dancing and singing along. All the shots of individual faces from the crowd weren't actors, they were "real people," there because they wanted to be, looking like they were having fun because they were. The construction worker dancing on a scaffold, way up on that half-finished building? A real construction worker. John Hughes saw him dancing, grabbed a cameraman and said, "You've got to get this guy." Then he looked at the street, saw it absolutely packed with thousands of people, all dancing and singing along with "Ferris," totally into it, and said to the guy on the camera crane, "TELL me we got that shot." Because there's no way they could have afforded to stage it, or even imagined something that wild. It just happened. TOO cool.
* There were several sequences actually filmed but cut from the final version of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In one, Ferris goes on a radio program and talks about wanting to be the first teenager to ride the space shuttle. This was actually included in what would have been the final cut, and a trailer went out with some of that material in it. Unfortunately, the day after the trailer was released the Challenger exploded; the studio pulled the trailer and Hughes had to recut the movie to trim the shuttle stuff. I actually remember that trailer. I saw it during the day or two it was in release. If I remember correctly, a voice asks various people, "What do you think of Ferris Bueller?" and one of the respondents, a high school kid, says, "Ferris Bueller? He's going to be the first teenager to ride the space shuttle."
* Also cut was Ferris' relationship with the Volbecks, the Charlie Sheen character's family. Garth Volbeck's father owns the tow company that hauls away Ed Rooney's car.
* Another excised bit: In the restaurant, when Ferris, Paige and Cameron are brought menus, none of them want to admit they can't read French so they order something, then start eating, having no idea what it is. Then we get to see their reactions when they find out it's pancreas. This is referred to later in the cab scene when Ferris, listing to Cameron the things they've done that day, says, "We ate pancreas."
It would have been nice to have the original trailer, revised trailer, and deleted scenes included on the DVD. While chances of seeing that level of work put into the DVD for a 20 year old movie, no matter how good, are slim (even assuming the chopped footage still exists) I can dream that maybe one day, on a future version of this DVD, it might happen. I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
While we're on the subject of wishes, why oh why was the music from Ferris Bueller's Day Off never released as a soundtrack? A crime, since it's got one of best combination of songs I've ever heard in a movie. Another "I'd buy it in a heartbeat" situation that'll probably never happen at this late date.
The later "Bueller, Bueller" edition of the film does not feature this excellent commentary track.
Want Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Bueller... Bueller... Edition) (1986) Discount?
The 5 stars is only in direct relation to what's ON this 'Bueller...Bueller..." edition and the film ITSELF. Would it have been soooooo difficult to transfer the old commentary from the bare bones edition of the film from 1999? It's a good thing i noticed before i sold it back to my local FYE for credit on the future purchase of what....maybe the THIRD release of FERRIS? Now i have to find a way to put the old dvd in the case with the new edition taking care not to scratch either. Too much time and energy on my part. THAT'S YOUR JOB, PARAMOUNT!!!!!! Where's the notoriously cut scene with the bong hit??? No out-takes?? I find that hard to believe. A great feel good film with some good bonus features leaves me hoping i don't get hit by a bus before they release the 25th anniversary edition in 2011. When PARAMOUNT will 'ONE UP' their usual DOUBLE DIPPING into fans' pockets with the DOUBLE DISC version this film originally deserved....
Okay...if you're a fan...just buy the damn thing because it's a must have for your film library and what IS included is pretty darn good...but there should've been more...and i KNOW there IS more...
C'mon...someone with brains at Paramount...SAVE FARRIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Another excellent production from ThinkFilms, where the past is dragged along as the future becomes epigrammatic and silent.
