'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'

I really can't imagine a more timeless, perfect movie than Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I enjoyed it 12 years after it was released in 1986 as a high school senior and I enjoyed it 25 years afterwards, when they decided to do a car commercial starring Matthew Broderick in a Bueller-type getaway day.

It's perfectly written, directed, a dark underbelly of self-loathing and doubt mixed with his cheerful, innocent and carefree effervescence teeming to the brim.

Directed and written by John Hughes, maybe more than any of his films, it is a promotion video for the city of Chicago as Ferris, Sloane and Cameron go to the trade floor, art museum, Wrigley Field and a downtown parade.

Said Hughes: "Chicago is what I am. A lot of Ferris is sort of my love letter to the city. And the more people who get upset with the fact that I film there, the more I'll make sure that's exactly where I film. It's funny—nobody ever says anything to Woody Allen about always filming in New York. America has this great reverence for New York. I look at it as this decaying horror pit. So let the people in Chicago enjoy Ferris Bueller."

Got to admit, Chicago holds a lot of charm even if a lot of Hughes' films are set in the suburbs and don't necessarily detail the beauty of the city quite like Ferris. 

The most interesting character in the entire film is clearly Cameron. Based on a real person, it's never clear his issues with his parents, particularly his bad, or how it is that he's dealing with all of this, like pretending to be sick.

Cameron's dad is no different from quite a number of other days. Cameron, however, is a lot more sensitive, who never follows in the callous attitude of his father toward having a relationship. The evidence in Cameron's angst is evident in, actually, Ferris' father. He is attentive and caring. He looks in on Ferris and calls in the middle of the day. He gets home early from his corporate job in a downtown high rise just to make sure that his son is OK after having a pretty mild cold (even if it was fake).

However, what is pretty evident with Ferris and his parents is completely lost and seething under the skin with Cameron and his parents. We would only assume he would get in serious trouble for wrecking the car, but we really don't know what that means, what that entails. And is Cameron really "standing up" to his father as much as spiting him for loving a car more than he loved his own son, or so Cameron thinks.