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August 23, 2007
Misconceived Sequel Pitch: Ferris Bueller's 40th Birthday
Not a remake, but a sequel. Ferris at 40. (Note: Reading the actual link, I see this is just a spec script being shopped around Hollywood, which means it's.... nothing. Almost certainly not going to happen. Most scripts that are actually bought aren't ever made. Thanks to Dave from Garfield-Ridge for that.)
With all due respect, while the Tao of Ferris was funny when he was a kid, that sort of thinking would be disastrous to him beyond age 18. Will this movie have the balls to admit that? Of course not. And it wouldn't be charming or endearing. I just imagine a script of everyone around the middle-aged Ferris saying, "Grow up already, man. It's just not cute anymore."
A guy I know -- and a complete leftist, incidentally -- thought FBDO destroyed our generation by suggesting that a bit of irresponsibility, dishonesty, and glibness was the key to success. (And of course, by being so enjoyably effective at communicating this message.)
I don't know if I'd go that far, but the movie, for all its virtues, has at its heart a pretty bad set of ideas. True, it was a comedy, and a somewhat fantastical one, so John Hughes gets a pass. I'm sure he thought part of the humor was how absurd it was that someone could luck through life like Ferris did. But dumb early teenagers, like me, took the movie as something of a manifesto.
I thought for a while it would be a pretty cool idea to emulate the Ferris Bueller Lifestyle ™, I can attest that it doesn't work. At least not unless you're born rich and possessed of a nearly superhuman level of confidence and glib charisma.