‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ at 40: What an Unlikely Teen Movie Hero Can Teach Gen Z About Life

“Life moves pretty fast,” Ferris Bueller, played by Matthew Broderick, says in the opening minutes of the 1986 film, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” “If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”It’s hard to believe it’s been 40 years since the release of this John Hughes cult classic, yet Ferris’s advice is more relevant today. Teenagers are glued to their smart phones, needing to record and post their every move or it didn’t happen. Many teenagers in 1986 now have their own teen children at home. How does the film hold up?Ferris Bueller is an unlikely hero. The movie starts with him faking an illness to ditch school and explore Chicago with his girlfriend and best friend. Addressing the camera directly, kind of like an influencer today, Ferris explains to viewers how to fake a sickness that’s serious enough to stay home but not grave enough to warrant a doctor’s office visit.Hughes was a master at capturing teenage angst, insecurity about the future, and middle-class suburban ennui. His other coming-of-age classics include “The Breakfast Club,” “Sixteen Candles,” and “Pretty in Pink.” Hughes, who died in 2009 at the age of 59, said he wrote the script for “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” in just one week.The emotional struggles of teenage life are largely the same today as they were in 1986. Ferris’s best friend Cameron Frye, played by Alan Ruck, is a depressed hypochondriac who fears his father’s judgement and wrath. He doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life once he graduates high school. He’s insecure.Ferris, by contrast, is a confident go-getter, rebellious, tech savvy for his time, and the one with the girlfriend. He constructs a pulley system and dummy to make it seem like he’s sick and sleeping in bed. He hacks into his school’s computer system to reduce the number of sick days in his file. He sets up answering machines and a doorbell recording to corroborate his tales. He convinces Cameron to let him take his father’s 1961 Ferrari on a joyride to Chicago.Yet Ferris is decidedly not a 2020’s teen. The ingenuity of Ferris’s pranks and hacking would be lost on a teenager today, who can do these things easily with a personal computer, smart phone, or increasingly AI.Ferris is also a 1980s individualist who says he has no interest in learning about socialism. “Isms in my opinion are not good,” he says directly to the camera. “A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself.”This attitude would probably get him canceled or labeled right wing by today’s racism, sexism, socialism, and ableism-obsessed teenagers. The film’s central characters are all white, a faux pas by today’s standards — and there isn’t even a LGBT character. If Ferris were a real person, he’d probably be a 57-year-old tech executive today, trying his best to live large.John Hughes. Wikimedia CommonsSome of the funniest moments of the movie come with hindsight. Charlie Sheen and Ben Stein make early acting career cameos. Mr. Sheen plays a small but plot-crucial role as a juvenile delinquent at a police station, offering sage advice to Ferris’s sister, played by Jennifer Grey. His portrayal of an overtired drug addict is spot on and maybe a little too close to real life.Mr. Stein, a former Nixon speech writer, plays an economics professor and delivers the iconic nasal-voiced rollcall in class: “Bueller… Bueller… Bueller.” Mr. Stein’s economics lecture about the failure of tariffs, the Laffer Curve, and “Voodoo economics” will draw a laugh amid President Trump’s tariff debates.Many of John Hughes’ films are renowned for containing New Wave soundtracks. Yet one area where this movie misses is the music. “Pretty in Pink” featured the Psychedelic Furs, Echo & the Bunnymen, New Order, The Smiths, and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. “The Breakfast Club” featured Simple Minds. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off has Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s “Love Missile F1-11” and a cover of The Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” that pales compared to the original. Hardly as iconic as Echo & the Bunnymen’s “Bring On the Dancing Horses” that was recorded specifically for Mr. Hughes. It’s no surprise then that an official “Ferris Bueller” soundtrack wasn’t released until 2016.The film is also a love letter to Chicago. Mr. Hughes grew up in a Chicago suburb, the fictional location of many of his films. Ferris, Cameron, and Ferris’s girlfriend Sloane visit Sears Tower, The Art Institute of Chicago, Wrigley Field for a Cubs game, and a German-American Von Steuben Day Parade. The camera cuts to close ups of artworks to signify the character’s emotional state and teenage wide-eyed curiosity about the world.‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.’ ParamountCameron spends nearly the entire film nervous and miserable until he hits breaking point. He kicks his father’s Ferrari, by mistake sending the car crashing through the glass wall of their modernist garage and totaling it. He decides not to run or let Ferris take the blame but to face his father.“I’m just tired of being afraid,” he says to Ferris and Sloane. “I got to take a stand.”“This is the best day of my life,” he says. Life does move “pretty fast.” It’s difficult to understand this as a teenager. As someone who is long past her teens, I can say the things I regret most in life are the opportunities I didn’t take, the ones I was scared to seize. As the saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained.Gen Z reportedly has higher rates of anxiety and depression than any prior generation. Helicopter parents, safety culture, air tags and cell phones to track their every move — they haven’t been allowed to take risks or to fail and learn from it. Perhaps some life lessons from Ferris Bueller could help. After all, if you don’t seize life, “you could miss it.”

‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ at 40: What an Unlikely Teen Movie Hero Can Teach Gen Z About Life

‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ at 40: What an Unlikely Teen Movie Hero Can Teach Gen Z About Life

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