Why is Ferris Bueller's Day Off considered so great?

Ferris isn't real. It's all in Cameron's head.

I actually realize that I didn't give it the proper chance considering I didn't get to it until late, so I accept some blame. But I guess I'm asking people who saw it at the right time why they liked it.

For instance, I liked Breakfast Club but I could attribute that mostly to Bender being hilarious. But I did see it when I was younger.

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There are tons of iconic "coming of age" teenager movies that wouldn't be good if you saw them for the first time as an adult.

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This. Especially with 80s movies.

You can also ask why "The Graduate" is iconic. Same principles apply.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off captured the zeitgeist of the mid 80's that culminated in the parody of it in Zach Morris - The cool kid who breaks all the rules and remakes the system in his favor. It was a teenaged dream, but also much of what America was working through at the time.

We went from the "Gray Flannel Suit" of the 1950s with the "Rebel Without a Cause" as the antithesis. Then, the Beantiks turned into Hippies as Baby Boomers came of age and people dropped out of society. But, as Baby Boomers grew older and had kids, they passed on this focused rebellion where you stay inside the system, but you remake it to fit your own personality/character.

See Maverick in Top Gun as another example. He is the rebellious hero who stays IN the system and becomes a hero in it while causing it to cater to him (a Tony Scott film). This was John Hughes schtick and it was everywhere in the 80's. Both Maverick and Ferris wore a leather jacket, which was a nod to James Dean, the Rebel Without a Cause, but they were not hopeless and disconnected.

You see similar themes in other John Hughes movies, such as Pretty in Pink, Breakfast Club, and Sixteen Candles. Even the Home Alone movies, but by 1990, this character had begun to die down. Like I said, Zach Morris in SBTB becomes a parody of it.

So, Ferris' popularity fit the time and those who watch it later can't relate to they way that he embodied what so many teenagers wanted to be. They all wanted to go be an investment banker with enough rebellion in them that they didn't lose their soul and could still rock out to Twist & Shout. It was a projection of their Baby Boomer parents giving them the proper way to rebel in a materialistic way.

By the time that Grunge arrived in 1991, the vapidity of the whole Baby Boomer ethos was exposed as being meaningless. So, you had this call to reject the whole thing again. Then, Clinton takes the White House (political Ferris) and the call to "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" was reissued in a utopian sense. Ferris was no longer needed as an ideal because he was being lived out from DC. The cool kids were now remaking the system from the inside. Or, so the fantasy went.

Will the cool, smooth anti-hero who works WITHIN the system to alter it to his wishes ever rise again? That is who Ferris was.

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Came out before my time

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I finally "righted that wrong" last month

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This explains everything.


eta: When this movie came out in '86, if you were anywhere from 8-20 years old Ferris Bueller was the coolest guy to ever hit the screen.

You wouldn't understand if you didn't grow up in the 1980s I guess.

I was born in 1983 and watched a ton of cheesy 80s movies.

I never saw The Labyrinth, and a few years ago someone mentioned "OMG, you have to see it. It's awesome...". Went to Rotten Tomatoes and it's 90+%, critically acclaimed, etc.

I even like the sci-fi, fantasy genre, but I turned it off after 30 minutes bc I thought it was terrible

It's honestly not considered to be that great. It's iconic, which is different than actually being good, but Ferris is a self-involved brat. He's not a hero, he's a smug Yuppie in training. In 10 years, Ferris is going to be selling junk bonds or subprime loans to unsuspecting housewives. He's a charlatan who hasn't quite tapped into his evil potential yet.

It's not Hughes' best work, and while I disagree with the whole "Ferris isn't real" internet theory, I do think Cameron is the main character, and probably the only sympathetic character in the film. He has an actual character arc.

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100% this. I mean, if anyone saw the breakfast club for the first time this week would it really be all that great? Honestly probably not.

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You didn't see the artistry in having kids smoke a joint in the library, dance their asses off, and do a Micheal Jackson scream that breaks glass windows all w/o getting caught from the ruckus?