He snuck genuine art past the multiplex censors. He lured viewers into embracing his film as an escapist farce, then hit them with a pitch-perfect exploration of teen angst. More than this, though, Hughes performed an astounding ontological feat. It featured a number of techniques that I recognized from other, later films: direct addresses to the camera, on-screen graphics, the prominent use of background songs to create de facto music videos, the sudden exhilarating blur of fantasy and reality. I wasn’t entirely sure it qualified as a teen movie at all. It was, without a doubt, the most sophisticated teen movie I had ever seen. I watched the film in a state of growing astonishment. He had about forty movies, most of which were thrillers of the sort that feature a European secret agent babe who takes her shirt off and a picturesque decapitation. Notwithstanding this, last winter I got sick, so sick I was reduced to raiding my landlord’s DVD collection. More often than not, I am really just a very big asshole.
And, as generally happens when I miss out on all the hubbub, I took it personally and thus bore a senseless grudge against the film, which I would routinely malign whenever people tried to explain how terrific it was. I missed Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on the first pass, so I never quite understood what all the hubbub was about.
