Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – Blu-ray Disc Review

May 2, 2009 – 12:07 PM - Posted by: Justin Sluss

Tags: Alan Ruck, Ben Stein, Charlie Sheen, Cindy Pickett, Edie McClurg, Jeffrey Jones, Jennifer Grey, John Hughes, Lyman Ward, Matthew Broderick, Mia Sara, Paramount

has an average rating of 7.9 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
Dolby TrueHD 5.1
are the DVD ports in Standard Def
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– 1986
– 102 minutes
– Paramount
–
This uses 28.0GB for the movie out of 33.2GB total.

Overall Verdict – Recommended

Buy it for $17.49 @ Amazon.com

— Review written by: Justin Sluss —

The Movie Itself was both Written and Directed by John Hughes, who also has done such classics as “Home Alone” (reviewed elsewhere on our site), “The Breakfast Club“, “Sixteen Candles” and countless other coming of age sagas of the 80′s especially. This story is a bit more unique than Hughes other coming of age tales in the fact that it focuses on one extremely charismatic, popular teenage male by the name of “Ferris Bueller” (played by Matthew Broderick). Ferris feels he needs a day off, hence the title. So he (like most kids) decides to play sick and miss school.

Convincing his parents is easy but his sister “Jeannie” (played by Jennifer Grey) is not so easily fooled. The real thing here to keep in mind is that this kid has it planned out and even has his room rigged to cover up his absence playing absent when he’s off enjoying himself elsewhere. This all agitates his sister who knows he’s faking it to get out of a day of school. She’s just agitated and really has no way to get him busted, so she goes about her day at school — even witnessing other schoolmates going around with “Save Ferris” fundraisers and such.

The real problem here for our hero, Ferris, doesn’t come from the side of his two loving (and overly perfect, I might add) parents but instead from a school worker, almost (but never clearly stated) an assistant principal-like figure by the name of “Ed Rooney” played by Jeffrey Jones. Mr. Rooney notices that Ferris has missed already a total of like eight days and decides to call and check up on him. He first tries his mother and gets to talking with her, starts to mention the days absent her son has on his computer when it suddenly starts changing before his very eyes. It of course is our “whiz kid” Ferris Bueller hacking (somehow in the mid 80′s) his school’s computer database. What you are witnessing is “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” but it’s also about his friend and his girlfriend and having a dream of a day off.

Overall, looking back on it 23 years later, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is a great film for those of all ages but namely those in their 20′s to 30′s especially that grew up on this film — like myself. If you’re under the age of 20 and never saw this film, there is no better time than now to check it out on Blu-ray Disc!

Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on a BD-50 (50 gigabyte dual-layered Blu-ray Disc) in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. This was shot using Panaflex cameras and lenses on Super 35mm film and makes for a pretty nice Hi-Definition transfer. This has some obvious film grain as you’d expect but it’s not a problem in the slightest bit, it in fact adds the retro 80′s feel to the visual presentation. The amount of detail now present is remarkable especially on Cameron‘s Dad’s bright red Ferrari which also is a great example of the vivaciousness of the color palette. The black level is solid, fleshtones are accurate. It’s no wonder that this film has a wonderful visual style to as it’s Director of Photography was the very talented Tak Fujimoto. Overall this has some minor flaws that another restoration might eventually fix but for now does the job impressively well. This is by far the best quality you’ve seen or will see “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” in anytime soon and earns a respectable, solid “4 Star Rating” for overall video quality.

Audio Quality on this release is presented in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround. The film starts up and the most important part is dialogue, which is delivered perfectly from here on throughout the film — never requiring even the slightest of volume adjustment. The rear channels seem to get a small share of action here and really kick in around 20 minutes or so into the film when the school employee “Ed Rooney” (played by Jeffrey Jones) is on the phone with first “Mrs. Bueller” and then eventually “Cameron“. It’s around this time a loud dramatic bit of the original music (Score) cuts in and sets the mood perfectly. I can’t say who’s original music it was since IMDb shows that Arthur Baker, Ira Newborn and John Robie all were contributors of music. Speaking of music, the parade scene that includes The Beatles‘ cover of “Twist and Shout” sounds excellent and has some decent use of the 5.1 soundscape. Bass is present at times, namely some of the rigged items in the bedroom of “Ferris Bueller” like his taped recordings of him snoring and such. Aside from the obvious mention that the “Oh Yeah” sounds especially nice, I’ll say this audio presentation really is solid. Enough to earn it a decent “4 Star Rating” for overall audio quality on this release.

Bonus Materials are DVD ports from the latest release presented in Standard Definition video (using MPEG-2) and Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound @224kbps.

• “Getting the Class Together: The Cast of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (27:45) is self-explanatory by the subtitle. This starts off with an interview from casting directors Jane Jenkins and Janet Hirshenson discussing their original choices for casting. It was pretty obvious to them that Broderick was the best bet for the lead character but they do mention John Cusack was considered, who had previously worked with writer/director John Hughes. Interviews from the cast are also included which are very much a treat.
• “The Making of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (15:29) is your basic straight-forward “making of” style featurette. This includes your obvious share of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with the cast and crew members. A lot of discussion here about writer/director John Hughes and eventually a short interview with him comes along.
• “Who is Ferris Bueller?” (9:12) takes a further in-depth analysis of the lead character of the film. Obviously you hear what both writer/director John Hughes and star Matthew Broderick thought of the character as well as other cast and crew in the form of interviews. Some of these interviews come from back in the production days (1985 and 1986), the rest seem to have been done more recently.
• “The World According to Ben Stein” (10:51) discusses his illustrious career and how he come to be a co-star in film that has easily made him extremely famous in pop-culture. Stein also discusses meeting the late Kurt Cobain and also former President George W. Bush who all offered him impressions of himself.
• “Vintage Ferris Bueller: The Lost Tapes” (10:16) this offers up some old interview footage with Matthew Broderick and Alan Ruck on-set. The two discuss the differences of working in plays and in motion pictures. They also discuss the psychological elements of their characters. The lovely Mia Sara discusses her part as well here in another on-set interview.
• “Class Album” allows you to use the left and right arrow keys to navigate through a slide show of pictures from promotional spots and from the film in Hi-Definition.

Overall, the bonus materials here we get are nothing more than DVD ports from the “Bueller… Bueller… Edition” re-release that came out quite a few years back. It would have been nice to have seen a Hi-Def cast reunion and/or retrospective shot specifically for this release but still, you’ll enjoy what you get here — regardless of it being recycled supplemental materials or not.

Blu-ray Disc packaging:

Screenshots:

NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.

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