Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. Part of the beauty of Ferris Bueller's Day Off - and, really, of any eighties John Hughes movie set in the fictional teenage haven of Shermer, Illinois - is that it takes place in a perfect, enclosed snowglobe of adolescence. All the drama, all the wild abandon, the naivete, the fun is entirely tied up in being a teen. The only time Ferris or any of the other characters make reference to a future beyond high school is a pretty grim one, as the happy-go-lucky hero predicts that both his girlfriend and best friend will inevitably drift away from him, since they're much smarter and deserve to get into better colleges. He's pretty much resigned to it, but doesn't let the realisation get him down, instead throwing himself into a larger-than-life hormone-fuelled day bunking off of school to go pose near art whilst a Smiths cover plays and then singing a German pop song on a parade float. Instead of letting himself and his friends get washed up in life, Ferris forces them to stop and appreciate being a teenager for a while. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kaG95ZIjHQ It's the age thing that makes us worry about the potential for Ferris Bueller sequels. A few years ago there were rumours of a script doing the rounds which would see Matthew Broderick reprising the eponymous role as a middle-aged man, this time taking a day off from his incredibly successful business. By jumping out of a plane. That sounds ridiculous, and is totally at odds with the original film, which was a celebration of youth before the responsibilities of adulthood drag you down; a grown up abandoning his responsibilities is less heroic. It's a little sad. Which is the feeling we got when a Ferris sequel turned up not on the big screen but another Super Bowl commercial, where pudgy fifty-something Matthew Broderick skips out on work to hawk a Honda CR-V. Ferris is a sell out. That's even sadder than the future he'd envisioned.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
