FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF – john hughes – 0.2 / 10

At this point in my exploration of the films of John Hughes, it’s comes as no surprise that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is borderline racist and misogynistic. It’s also no surprise that it’s bad. What is surprising is just how awful it is. It’s just flat out terrible in every way. Nothing in it makes the slightest bit of sense. From the unexplained fainting of Ferris the night before the events of the film to the newspaper article about the campaign to save Ferris that appears on the same day that the campaign begins, nothing makes any logical sense.

In fact, I could spend the better part of two pages cataloguing the ridiculous inconsistencies. An abbreviated list would be as follows: Ferris’s sister appears much older than him but attends the same school even though he’s a senior. The same sister appears to attend no classes however, and plays hokey from school with no issues even though Ferris has to perform some ridiculous stunts to do the same. Then there’s the fact that the principal seems to have some sort of authority outside the school since he seems to think that he can punish Ferris for pretending to be sick. Then there’s the fact that Ferris crosses paths with his father on three separate occasions in a city of millions.

But what’s most troubling about the film is that Ferris is a giant asshole and his assholishness goes completely unpunished to the point where the consequences of his actions, which are being borne by others, aren’t even glimpsed on screen. His buddy takes the blame for the destroyed Ferrari, but it happens off screen. It’s almost as if, if Ferris can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. That makes a certain kind of sense considering that’s how the self-centered Ferris behaves, but it’s an incredibly reckless message to put into a movie aimed at teenagers.

The more I see of John Hughes’s movies, the less respect I have for those who have some fondness for them. Having never seen them during my youth when they would have had the most impact, I can’t vouch for how strong the pull of nostalgia is. But I cannot imagine how the fact that a person liked a film a decade or two ago can overrule all their critical faculties. There is just nothing redeeming, interesting, funny or insightful in any of these films. They are superficial, unfunny, boring and insipid. And I’m beginning to think that Hughes's disappearance from filmmaking around the start of the 1990s had less to do with him and more to do with everyone figuring out what a no talent hack he really was.