Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) is a born con artist. When he's not talking a mile a minute to his girlfriend Sloan (Mia Sara) and his best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck), he's stepping aside, facing the camera and addressing the
audience.
In his dedication to the joy of loafing, Ferris convinces his parents he's ill, the student body starts raising money to save his life with a kidney transplant, and the dean of students thinks all sorts of people are dying.
But Ferris isn't dying. He's just lying, and it's the ninth time in the same semester.
A large part of the film is then devoted to elaborate schemes
designed to keep Ferris and his pals out of school: Answering machines are
fixed, a fake body run by strings attached to a doorknob rolls around in Ferris's bed to fool concerned and nosy
parents, a sickbed message is recorded through a loudspeaker to answer the doorbell and deter inquisitive truant
officers . . .
Some of this subterfuge is ingenious, but it soon wears thin.
While the kids are bulldozing their way into an expensive restaurant, catching a ball game at Wrigley Field, and staging their own musical production number from
Grease in the middle of a mysterious parade (if it's a holiday, with floats and
marching bands and 10,000 extras, why does anyone need to play hooky from school in the first place?), the
principal - determined to catch Ferris red-handed - slinks around like a CIA agent on secret
manoeuvres.
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