Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Year: 1986

Grade: A+

Country: USA

Director: Hughes

Review

one of the reasons this film succeeds is that it shows both extremes of being a teenager. you’ll never be as neurotic and in as much trouble as cameron and you’ll never be as slick and cool as ferris, but you probably feel like it at one point or another in your teen years. a definite all-time classic from a guy who has more than a couple of them. john hughes and martin scorsese are the great auteurs of my time. i may love p.t. anderson and spielberg is more prolific and popular, but hughes had a distinctive style of writing and directing that surpasses them both. the funny thing is that he talent really only lasted about 6 years, whereas many of the other greats in film had longer spans of success – kurosawa with rashomon in 1950 and sanjuro in 1962, kubrick with the killing in 1956 and full metal jacket in 1987, scorsese with taxi driver in 1976 and aviator in 2002. hughes was more like breakfast club in 1985 and home alone in 1990, or you could argue national lampoon’s vacation in 1983 and curly sue in 1991; either way a much smaller span of greatness. not a great span, but he had true gems in that time. films that defined a generation as well as a period of life that is as transformative (mentally and physically), the teens, as any other.