When I saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off in 1986, I thought the movie was all about Ferris outwitting his blowhard principal, Ed Rooney-- after all, Ferris is adored by sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, and even dickheads . . . they all think he's a righteous dude, and so he was fighting oppressive authority for all of us teenagers-- but I just watched the movie again, with my kids-- who were rooting for Ferris, of course-- but now I realize that the movie is actually about Cameron and his anxieties about the future, a future Ferris will have no problem with-- Ferris can jump up on a float in a parade and start singing and dancing, he's going to have no problem navigating the world, and though we're glad he makes it home on time, we know that, like James Bond, he's going to be fine . . . but for Cameron and Sloane, the future is much more ambiguous, and the real climax of the movie is the scene you don't see, the scene where Cameron confronts his father and takes the heat for wrecking his dad's beloved Ferrari . . . the film is a comedy, so we assume that everything turns out okay, but we'll never know for sure, that portion is oddly unresolved.
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Next up: why Weird Science isn't a silly romp about two sex-starved teens who make a girl, it's really a sad tale of Lisa, the girl who never really finds her true identity and winds up being into malakas.
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