Living Life Before It Passes By

How to Make the Best of an Otherwise Normal School Day

If thrill-seekers should ever decide to skip a day of school, Matthew Broderick, who stars as Ferris Bueller in the 1986 movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” displays some clever insight into how to pull it off.

He did not premeditate the decision to skip school and fool everyone he knew into thinking he was sick but instead woke up with the notion that today was too beautiful to sit through boring classes. Ferris Bueller pulls some tricks out of his sleeve that will leave his school principal frustrated and ultimately allow him to spend an exciting day in Chicago.

After convincing his parents that he was sick in the morning, Ferris uses his time in the shower to justify to the audience why he needs to skip school. He uses that time to devise tactics to make his sickness believable to both his parents and the school board, according to an article on MelMagazine.

After quickly devising a plan, Ferris calls his hypochondriac best friend, Cameron, who is at home in bed. Since Ferris got a computer instead of a car when he turned 16, he needed Cameron to come pick him up.

Ferris makes Cameron pose as the father of Sloane to pick her up from school due to a made-up death in the family. Ferris and Cameron pick up Sloane, girlfriend of Ferris, in Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari.

Some critics say Cameron should have starred in the movie since he was coerced into doing most of the legwork Ferris planned. According to MichiganDaily, Cameron has a vastly more dynamic character as he transforms from a shy and uptight character to one who holds confidence and decides to face his father’s rage at the end of the movie.

Although Cameron has supposedly pulled off the plan, it is still relevant that Ferris is the mastermind along with his witty and entertaining character.

Ferris, Sloane, and Cameron take Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari into Chicago to try and make the best of their school day. The friends attend a baseball game, go to a sightseeing skyscraper, and visit an ongoing parade downtown.

Their plan to skip school would not have worked without Ferris’s mentality that school is childish. Ferris connects a pre-recorded audio of himself to his bedroom answering machine to fool people who tried to verify he was sick.

As stated in an article from BFI, “Parents are there to guide us through our teenage years, but they are also there to be played.”

Throughout their adventure, Ferris maintains a relaxed and outgoing composure even though he and his friends have a lot of close interactions with trouble. He shows the audience how to stay calm and take advantage of common household items to take a day off.

“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is a classic example of how an ordinary day can be whatever he makes of it.