Ferris Bueller's Day Off Made $70 Million. Cameron Paid for All of It

Ferris Bueller's Day Off came out in June 1986, cost about $5.8 million and made around $70 million in North America. John Hughes wrote it fast, in under a week by most accounts, and it shows in the good way and the other way. In 2014 the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry, which is where America keeps the films it would save from a fire, alongside Citizen Kane and, presumably, at least one Western nobody has watched since Eisenhower.

The premise: Ferris, a high school senior played by Matthew Broderick, fakes being sick, talks his anxious friend Cameron into stealing his father's prized 1961 Ferrari, picks up his girlfriend Sloane, and spends a day in downtown Chicago. He talks to the camera the whole time, which is charming for twenty minutes and after that feels like being stuck next to a man at a wedding who's explaining his own toast.

Let's take attendance. Cameron is actually sick, in bed, and Ferris bullies him out of it with a phone call. Cameron is terrified of his father, and Ferris makes him hand over the father's most beloved possession. When the parking attendants joyride the car and run up the odometer, it's Cameron who has the breakdown, and when the car goes out the window, it's Cameron who stays behind to take the blame. Ferris goes home and beats his parents to the bedroom. That's not a hero's journey. That's a getaway.

Defenders say the movie knows this and that the real story is Cameron finally standing up to his dad. Maybe. But Hughes gives that awakening a few minutes and gives the parade float more. A movie that cared about Cameron would follow him home. This one follows Ferris, waving.

The only person who sees Ferris clearly is his sister Jeanie, and the movie treats her as a nag until she, too, gets charmed. The other person who sees him clearly is Ed Rooney, the principal, and the movie's answer to Rooney is to have him attacked by a dog and humiliated on a school bus. In most stories the man who notices the fraud is the detective. Here he gets the bus.

And yes, the set pieces are terrific. The parade, the art museum, the baseball game, the 'Twist and Shout' scene. But a movie made of terrific set pieces is a highlight reel, and a highlight reel is what you watch when you don't want the game. I loved this film at fifteen, which is the right age to love a boy who gets away with everything. At fifty you've met him. He's in sales now, and he still owes you money.

It's a skillful, sunny, very rewatchable movie, and I won't stop anyone from rewatching it. Just keep an eye on your car. The people who tell you life moves pretty fast are usually the ones who left you holding the keys.