(Columns often contain opinion. Any opinions expressed are those of the author.)
Ferris Bueller really can take the day off from my thoughts and opinions.
Because I think the most interesting character in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is the angsty teen Cameron Frye. Alan Ruck plays him well with a mix of quirkiness, deadpan stares, sarcasm and melancholy.
Just as he was 40 years ago in June 1986 when many first saw the film and as he will be when people see him at the Miller for a reshowing on Sunday, June 14.
(Don’t get me wrong, as Bueller, Matthew Broderick breaking the wall by interacting with the audience via the camera is superb. But his character just does not interest me. Even at age 11, I thought the character was a smug you-know-what.)
Cameron struggles with a (presumably) workaholic father as I did. And he cannot speak with the man or even reason with him. Thankfully, my father did not idolize a sports car the way Cameron’s did. I do not think I could have rebelled by taking said car the way Cameron did, however.
He shows a different side by doing this. Usually, he is a hypochondriac introvert who suffers from agoraphobia stemming from high anxiety and low self-esteem. As it takes major prompting to get him to even leave his bed (and this has happened before from what one can tell from comments) he is also majorly depressed. I can relate to Cameron a lot as I am sure many teens who had mental health issues could. In high school, I was a lot more introverted and had mental health issues that took until way post-university to resolve.
A major, later incident in the film proves that Cameron is truly mentally unstable, and his mental health status can be called into question when he stares at a parent and child in a famous painting in yet another scene and keepings honing in on the details obsessively. I relate to Cameron’s instability, though I am completely stable at this point in my life.
In fact, I will share something deeply personal in the hope that it will help others. During one of my lowest points in my life before I checked myself in for help, one of my best friends once talked me out of taking a whole bottle of prescribed pills by having me place them as far away from myself as possible while keeping me on the phone way into the night (please call the Georgia Crisis and Access Line if you are thinking of suicide / harming yourself or others in any way, call (800) 715-4225 or 988 if you have a Georgia area code). I know where Cameron is coming from and the interior issues with which he grappled. Bueller does call Cameron out on some of his issues while also caring about him, and those are the more interesting moments for his character.
In my opinion, Cameron has the most interesting soliloquy of the film – a typical John Hughes diatribe about relationships with parents, etc. Cameron’s is, of course, about his father. I am a little biased toward trouble souls.
Yes, Bueller has his clever plan to play hookie from school and one of the more intelligent dummies in the bed routines to feign appearing to be sick in bed (a common cartoonish or sitcom-ish trope but made a little more original here). His usage of a programmable keyboard to make snoring sounds is top notch. To seal the deal for the illusion of his being home sick, his manipulation of phones and multiple phone lines and even answering machines do make for entertaining content.
And we all know that with modern cell phones, caller ID and other aspects of modern life that this film would never work as-is in modern day and is very much a product of the ’80s. Not being able to change other people’s voicemails may have made another snafu had this film occurred in the new millennium. Anyway, because Bueller is so good at all of this manipulation and everything becomes so easy for him, he becomes less interesting.
His ability to fake a reservation at a fancy restaurant and other shenanigans with his peers is definitely interesting. But he’s no Cameron.
As he is the favorite son and experiences little conflict with his parents. Yes, he has a nemesis, Rooney, the principal in charge of school discipline. But this dynamic has become a trope bordering on teen film cliché at this point.
Speaking of Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), he is probably the second most interesting character in the film (followed by his hilarious secretary who I will always see the typically Midwestern Ms. Poole from an 80s sitcom which remains hazy in my memory). Where Cameron is the tragic figure who occasionally wears the comedic mask (and all comedy is born out of sadness), Rooney is the comedic figure who most often wears the tragic mask.
To pursue Bueller, he goes through more self-risking slap stick than even perhaps Charlie Chaplin in his classic films. He starts as a control freak principal with some funny lines as he gets duped here and there by Bueller to a completely broken man.
-Spoiled appetite/spoiler alert!
By the time we see him at the end – battered, muddied, and reduced to having to hitch a ride on a school bus back to campus when the little geeky girl offers him gummy bear, we don’t know whether to laugh or cry with him.
But when the little girl says, “Gummy bear… they’ve stayed nice and warm in my pocket” and Rooney discards the gummy bear with disgust, we’re back to laughing at him again. The character is definitely one that many love to hate.
In quite a number of his other films, Hughes tends to do a great job having a female be at center stage. But Bueller’s love interest in this film, Sloane Peterson, is very much as secondary character. And she just seems along for the ride and the fun without many discussions of a real substance. Mia Sara did a much better job with another 80s film when she portrayed Lily in “Legend”, running the gamut from innocent princess-type to a woman either possessed by or pretending to be possessed with demons. In this film, though she does emote love quite well and empathy for Cameron, for a good bit of it, like the actions of her friends, she phones in her performance.
So the third best character in the film is not hers. It is the soundtrack. That midi-infused soundtrack with its “chhhk-chhk-chikety-cha!” synth noises became an iconic part of the 80s and added to the suspense and fun within the film.
Honorable mention to Ben Stein for his monotone teacher moments. I can still hear him calling, “Beuller. Beuller. Beuller” in my head to this day.
So don’t play hookie from the showing at the Miller this Sunday at 2 p.m. You won’t even have to miss Sunday School.
Ron Baxley, Jr. is a veteran journalist who has been a published author for 34 years and is working on writing a Southern-set television series. His latest satirical Southern fantasy Oz book, “O.Z. Diggs the Fifth Estate” is the third in the O.Z. Diggs VII series. For additional columns and fiction, go to https://substack.com/@ronbaxleyjr . Contact him via ronbaxleyjr.com .
