Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Back to School, The Manhattan Project, 1986
X-ray segment – John Hughes, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink
Siskel and Ebert Movie Reviews
Original movie reviews untainted by time!
- Earth Girls Are Easy, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, See No Evil Hear No Evil, For Queen and Country, The Rainbow, 1989
- The Public Eye, Candyman, Under Siege, A River Runs Through It, Night and the City, 1992
5 thoughts on “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Back to School, The Manhattan Project, 1986”
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Well, Patrick, Gene echoed your sentiments about success getting to John Hughes’ head, although this was a lot earlier than Home Alone. I agree with you that his worst movies were his post-Home Alone family junk. I still think Gene missed the boat on Ferris Bueller.
I think Ebert even underrated Ferris Bueller. As a pre-teen kid, the movie worked for me on multiple levels, the slapstick comedy, the quotable dialogue and the Ferris/Cameron friendship. Time has been very kind to Hughes’ teen comedies, probably because nothing is being made like them anymore. In a way they’re super-enhanced versions of ’80s sitcoms, with lots of laughs leading up to a moral lesson at the end. That whole style has gone out the window in TV and movie comedy, which now just try to go for non-stop laughs without much depth or meaning at all. And if you want anything that’s going to explore teen angst, you have to look at serious dramas. Modern critics also find many more layers of thematic meaning in Ferris Bueller beyond the obvious, such as that it stands as a monument to human freedom itself. It’s also a fantastic time capsule of the ’80s. It feels slightly dated in just enough ways to be pleasantly nostalgic without becoming hard to relate to. Siskel and Ebert didn’t even begin to dig into everything this movie had in it that other comedies both then and now don’t even approach.
I liked Ferris Bueller’s Day Off due to my cousin doing the score.
I am going to have look at the credits more closely in that movie, Steven. Very cool to know!
So do I.