Show Ferris Bueller rolls on as DVD I Gene Seymour Watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off always makes me feel Jennifer Greys Grey's pain Grey you'll recall plays Jeannie younger sister of the movies movie's eponymous slacker hero Matthew Broderick who seems to have been born bom with a force fi field ld repelling bad luck Jeannie cant can't believe that Ferris their parents that hes he's t too o sick sick to go go t to to s school ho l' l while she couldn't catch that break if her head was detached from her body She cant can't catch any breaks and neither can any of the movies movie's other Ferris anti-Ferris activists notably high school chief Ed Rooney Jeffrey Jones who wrecks his clothes his composure and possibly his career trying to bust Ferris' Ferris beautiful scam a scam you'll recall that works so consummately consummately consummately that all of Chicago is praying for his speedy recovery while he his girlfriend Mia Sara and his best friend Alan Ruck are paving I ay y ji the ne l their lives Its It's easy to understand how this 1986 comedy remains so widely enduringly beloved Who wouldn't want to blow off offa a cloudless day of school hijack a parade float take in a Cubs game browbeat ones one's way into a fancy restaurant and get away with all of it Its It's a mouse cat-and-mouse cartoon with bad behavior and audacity using up every inch of the movies movie's urban-suburban urban real estate Its It's a wish-fulfillment wish fantasy for the kid who already has everything Maybe its it's that last part that's always k kept p my y enthusiasm for r Ferris Ferns Bueller in i r f s.- s. f The The movie movie encourages encourages yo you 10 lo to think that theres there's something liberating about Ferris' Ferris flamboyant flamboyant flamboyant flam flam- boyant self-indulgence self especially especially especially espe espe- when writer-director writer John Hughes offers such a dire contrast in depicting Ferris' Ferris school as a drudge fa factory tory But you have to be in an incredulously good mood to see anything heroic or even sympathetic in a guy whose major grievances against the world orld include I asked for a car I got a computer Hows How's that for being born bom under a bad sign Ferris shows some ersatz nobility toward his nerdy best friend But for the most U 4 ties tie's es e's Master of the p part J 1 f I 1 a smug O Universe walking over anything anything anything any any- thing and anybody to get what he wants and basking in the Universes Universe's congratulations for forGetting forGetting forGetting Getting Over That's why Im I'm more with Jeannie than with Ferris and friends My eyes roll with hers over the mass acceptance of Ferris as supreme righteous dude Also as with Jeannie I Ferris Bueller Bueller I Coon Con n tage bage Ferris Bueller Cont on Page 7 re resist the moyie's movle's e J of o the premise that this tills is a world where AV ers Win and Losers Lose and there theres s nothing anyone c can do JO to alter the equation S i i r 7 r f v f t s Youre You're telling me to o lighten up Ill I'll tell you what Ill I'll even own up to at Richard Edsons Edson's joyriding joyriding joyriding joy- joy riding parking attendant and Ben Steins Stein's teacher droning on and arid on about tariffs and supply-side supply economics The Bueller Bueller tag to this special new edition is in tribute to Steins Stein's signature signature signature sig sig- nature roll call On that same subject You can find Candles along w with th Hughes' Hughes The Breakfast Club and W Weird ird Science nce both from 1985 on The Brat Pack Col Collection e on Universal Home Entertainment Packaged like one of those dull blue spiral notebooks that are as much a part of late century high s school hool life as SATs the three-disc three set will likely st stir stiff deep nostalgia in those who came of age in the and might even give kicks to present-day present teens who bathe their brains in marathon WI VIII telecasts of I Love the |