Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Wow. My first "official" review as a member of the movie club. Goosebumps...

Ahem. Matthew Broderick is a GOD among men. Well, except for that huge lizard movie, which, to use a phrase I only learnt today, was a pile of bum bananas.

But: Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Wargames were two of my favourite films when I was young.... er. Younger.

There's a lot of similarities between them. He's a nerd in both of them, but a cool nerd. He has a computer in both of them, and both feature him hacking into the school computer to alter his own records. They're also both about him bucking authority figures. Also (and as a nerd this will always be beyond my comprehension) he's going out with the hottest girl in school¹.

If Wargames was the reason we started to play about with computers, then Day Off was when we started lying to our parents and playing hookey. Although at first glance this may not seem obvious, it's actually a coming of age movie. Ferris is about to graduate high school. He'll be going of to college and he has to deal with the fact that his girlfriend has another year of high school² and that he and his best friend Cameron will drift apart. So he's taking one last day off school, and he's going to make the most of it.

It's a monumentally funny film, not least because of Broderick's to-camera quips, and it's the only film that's had the Ooh song by Yello, where it didn't seem cheesy. It is quintessentially 80s; the hair, the sunglasses, the polyester suit. Far more than a simple nostalgia flick, this is an important cultural film, and should be preserved along with Citizen Kane, Gone With The Wind, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Superman.

Score: B

OQ: "Ten bucks says he's sitting in his car right now trying to decide whether to come over or not."

Best Bit: Has to be when garage attendants, having 'borrowed' the Ferrari that Ferris 'borrowed' from Cameron's dad, leap over the camera, in slow motion, to the Star Wars theme tune. In fact I think it's a contender for 'Best Use of the Star Wars Music Outside a Star Wars Movie' award.

.....What do you mean, there's no such Oscar category?

¹Bu---wha---how----but he's a nerd! Surely he should be in the extra curricular club, wear thick glasses and his best friend should be a mould in a petri dish called Derek.
²The cradle snatching perv!