This past Saturday brought another flashback movie to the Continental theater, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Again, this was a movie I'd never seen before on the big screen. Again, seeing it with an audience was a whole lot of fun.But unfortunately, the experience was also different from others I've had with these flashback movies. This time, I was forced to admit that I really don't quite like this movie as much as I thought. It's still top 100 material, for certain. But I'd actually had it in my top 10 before this, and now having watched it again for the first time in a while, I can't really see it there any more.
However this movie might have "spoken to me" (to use a cliche) when I was younger, I'm not sure it does anymore. And unlike other movies I may have outgrown a bit over time, I don't have a really strong memory of seeing this one for the first time (as I do with many other films of the 80s I actually saw in the theater, or with close friends or family).
I think it comes down to my feeling this time around that the movie was just a little too "candy"-like for me to hold it in such high esteem. Oh, it's well made candy, and incredibly fun. The cast is great. The jokes still make me laugh. But it's not really part of a bigger package. There's no real tension, little adventure, very little in the way of serious emotion (though Cameron's awakening at the conclusion of the film comes close)... nothing but the laughs, really.
The laughs are good. Good enough that I'm sure when I get around to revising that movie list of mine (like I keep saying I'm going to), I'm sure Ferris Bueller's Day Off will still be in the top half. But it's fallen from the top 10.
2 comments:
To reprise a recent theme... :)
I used to agree with you (about the film's "fall from grace") until recently... when my three girls (aged 10, 6 ans 4) started to watch the movie compulsively on DVD. And they get such a HUGE kick out of it that I'm pulled in again.
I don't think it'll ever reach what something like Breakfast Club meant to me (and still does, to some extent), but it's here to stay.
FKL
I think you're onto something. The film never really delivers on any tension between Rooney and Bueller. In fact, the film's always felt like whatever tension was there was cut out of an earlier draft of the script in favor of focusing only on the four teens. Really, it's a collection of set pieces strung together with the theme of "carpe diem."
I also saw this in a reprisal at a theatre many years ago, but compared to other films in the series such as 2001, Forbidden Planet, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, it's just ... candy. I think the problem is that it works so well on the small screen where it's lived for such a long time, like many of the other Brat Pack flicks.
Post a Comment