I found Ferris reprehensible because he bullied and manipulated his friends into doing things they didn’t want to do. Every idea he had, they tried to talk him out of. So he’d lay on the bullying thicker until they went along with it. I was quite sure that, if Ferris got busted, he’d have thrown Cameron and Sloane under the bus and walked away scot-free. That pissed me off. For me, it was mostly the way he treated his friends. I didn’t care about how he treated the snooty maitre’d, or the principal or anything like that, but his own friends? Not a nice guy.
He bullies Cameron (who is actually sick) into joining him and impersonating Sloane’s dad to get her out. She might have been happy to skip but she wouldn’t have done it without him.
They didn’t have Cameron’s dad’s permission to take the car: it was stolen. Not “not exactly stolen” but exactly stolen for a joyride which led to it’s wreck.
Maybe I have an overdeveloped sense of right and wrong, but he was a bad friend.
What was bullying about it? It was all pretty please, come on, nothing horrible.
And he offered to take the heat for Cameron; it sounded genuine.
I just remembered that he wasn’t the one who ‘treated the Ferrari badly’ either; they just drove it into town, parked it, then tried to roll back the speedometer after discovering it had gone much further than they expected. Which I guess is not treating it particularly well, but they’re not the ones who went leaping into the air in it.
Cameron can’t have been that sick if he was able to run around all day having fun. Friends sometimes try to persuade friends to do fun things when they’re in the kind of mood Cameron was in. Instead of lying around feeling depressed, Cameron went to a ball game, an art gallery, a posh restaurant and a parade and really enjoyed himself. That’s not being a bad friend.
They took the car to the city and back; it’s bad, I guess, but they didn’t actually intentionally do anything dangerous with it. That’s the kind of thing a kid would be grounded for - it’s not a huge crime.
We don’t know that Sloane wouldn’t have skipped school without him; she seems pretty self-confident.
i disagree he was a bad friend. he offered to take the heat for wrecking the ferrari for pete’s sake.
i’m pretty much with SciFiSam. none of you ever skipped school, lied to your parents, went on a joyride, or snuck in somewhere you didn’t belong? please.
ferris bueller is a fun, lighthearted movie and i enjoy the hell out of it. yes, ferris is manipulative, sneaky, and lies to authority figures. he’s also charming and charismatic and fun.
lighten up!
So, you were pissed off by something you decided he would do, but that he didn’t actually do? Okay…
I actually got the opposite impression – that he would have gone out of his way to protect Sloane and Cameron if the chips were down. But I can neither prove nor disprove either theory because it didn’t actually come up in the film.
Yeah, buncha killjoys in this thread. It was a fun, teenage wish-fulfillment fantasy. Still holds up well, in my opinion, and I’m 36. Yeah, Ferris is a bit of a smarmy prick who likes to push against authority figures and see just how much he can get away with, but I tend to like people like that.
For me, a big reason that the movie is fun is the clever use of music. Like the Star Wars theme playing as the parking valets launch the Ferrari into the air and of course the use of Oh Yeah during the school bus scene. And I always liked the scene in which Cameron stares at the Seurat painting.
Yes. 
I am aware that this is neither logical nor rational.
actually, it does- when he offers to cover for cameron killing the car. it’s not just a gesture, he tries to talk cameron into it: “trust me, you don’t want this kind of heat.” cameron declines, but the offer was there.
ditto that, on all counts.
I don’t really get the hate unless you’re completely misunderstanding the premise of the movie. Ferris Beuller is supposed to represent what every high schooler wants to be. He’s sort of like a pre-Tyler Durden. He was immensely popular, he had a hot girlfriend, and always seemed to get away with everything and seemed like a complete dick to everyone. Isn’t that how it seemed to everyone in high school who wasn’t the most popular kid when they saw the most popular kid? Yes, it involves a lot of manipulation, lying, and selfishness, but that’s a large part of the point.
You see, he does some selfish things, but at the same time he’s helping people. Like with the Ferrari at the end, he took it originally for selfish reasons, but was willing to take the blame when it went wrong and ultimately helped his friend break out. His selfish actions helped his sister get over her own issues. So where he did a lot of things with selfish motivation they did, in a strange way, end up helping people more than hurting them. And even at the end, he realizes that his pipe dream of being so popular and being able to do pretty much whatever he wants will be coming to an end when he graduates soon. It’s sort of his last hurrah in his own pipe dream and he inadvertantly helped a few people along the way.
But he’s definitely not supposed to be likeable. Is Dr. House likeable? He’s a huge jackass, constantly breaks rules and manipulates people to get what he wants, though he does self-destruct from time to time, but he’s still a compelling character. What makes Ferris compelling isn’t that he’s likable, it’s that pretty much everyone at that age knew a Ferris in their own life and perhaps to some extent wanted to live that life. We relate through the same way that so many people envied that most popular kid, and it carries out that fantasy rather than crashing down a reality that their lives aren’t as interesting as they might seem to be.
I think all the haters had a cool brother.
I find him immensely likeable. Apparently some people think he was a dick to his friends, but I didn’t see that at all. The rest? He’s funny, introspective, carefree, confident - how’s that supposed to be unlikeable? Obviously YMMV on whether you actually liked him, but I don’t think he was intentionally portrayed as unlikeable.
He didn’t actually do anything to his sister. The only time they interact is right at the end, and she never mentions him doing anything to her. She was just mad at him getting away with skipping school and being hugely popular.
I didn’t think he was evil, just that he was incredibly tiresome and not likeable at all.
He’s the kind of smarmy git who always has to manipulate everyone into doing *his *thing, and who constantly has to make sure that he’s the centre of attention. In real high school, that’s actually not who you want to have along, especially on any kind of non-legit adventure. In real life it ruins the fun, rather than creating it. Everyone’s happily doing X and having a blast, and suddenly Ferris decides that he wants to do Y - and hey presto, rather than being about all of you and the fun you’re having, it’s about Ferris and how cool he is and OMG look at me look at meee are you all looking at me?!!
Basically, in my experience of high school, people get bored of this guy pretty fast. He has one arse-licker who sticks to him like glue and laughs like a donkey at all his jokes, and everyone else is going, ‘Oh, God, let’s not tell Ferris we’re doing X, or he’ll want to come along and you remember what happened last time.’
You didn’t get invited along much in high school did you?
This nicely sums up my feelings on the movie. BTW, the movie was too ingrained into my consciousness b4 hearing the “It’s all in Cameron’s head.” theory.
As far as offering to take the blame for the Ferrari… um, I’m not sure what I’m missing, but, he should! It’s at least his fault as much as it is Cameron’s.
Cameron has a fit and hits the car- this part is an accident and what sends it out the window. However, ordinarily the worst that would happen from hitting the car is maybe a dent. Instead the car is propped up on [a jack?] and in reverse with a brick on the accelerator in a glass room over a cliff, about 21 different “really really stupid things to do” that are 100% Ferris’s brainchildren, and all because Ferris convinced the admittedly weak willed Cam to steal it in the first place. (And it is theft; you can absolutely have your minor child arrested for taking a vehicle without permission.)
I don’t see it as heroic that he volunteers to take the heat. I see it as cowardly that he doesn’t stay and face the heat with Cam when he’s just as responsible as Cam is. Instead he’s in his own house with no apparent concern for the fact that Cam is getting the ass chewing of three lifetimes (quite understandably) for not only taking a prized possession without permission but doing (in 2012 USD) easily $100,000 worth of damage to vehicle and house combined. (I hope that Cameron narcs, which will start a chain reaction- the Buellers learn what a two-faced con-man Ferris is, he’s held responsible for his share of the damage, the Dean of Students is vindicated [he’s an asshole, but he’s right in being pissed at Bueller, Sloane, etc.] and karma’s fuzzy back is stroked a bit.)
How do you feel about Bart Simpson?
Aside from lying to my parents about petty things (i.e. not grand theft auto), no; I’m pretty sure I never did any of those things. I wasn’t some kind of social misfit or Cameron-esque doormat either. But I was a good kid.
I guess I just don’t like people who revel in breaking society’s rules and get away without consequences.
So you always got caught, right?