The 1986 Movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"

The movie Dirty Dancing was released in August 1987, and the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off was released in June 1986. In both movies, Jennifer Grey played a resentful sibling of about high-school age.

* In Ferris Bueller's Day Off she plays the younger sister who resents her older brother, Ferris, who is a high-school senior who plays hooky from school.

* In Dirty Dancing she plays a 17-year-old, just graduated from high school, who resents her older sister's conventional feminine behavior.

Grey was born in 1960, so she was about 25 years old when Ferris Bueller's Day Off was filmed and about 26 years old when Dirty Dancing was filmed. In both movies, however, she looks like a girl in her mid-teens. In that regard, the first movie qualified her casting for the second movie.

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The following video is the Ferris Bueller's Day Off trailer.

The following insightful, superb video features Jennifer Grey in the movie.

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Grey's acting in Ferris Bueller's Day Off is excessively expressive. She mugs with her face and gesticulates with her entire body. I suppose that she was told to act this comical manner by the director.

I suppose also that her experience of watching herself act so in this movie prompted her to act much more intelligently and subtly in her following movie, Dirty Dancing.

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I watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off in a movie theater on July 4, 1986. I remember the date, because my brother and his wife were visiting, from Iowa, me and my wife, who were living near Washington DC. Instead of us all going to some July 4 event -- like watching the fireworks show at the US Capitol -- I insisted that we all go watch this movie. After we watched the movie, everyone was disappointed -- and my wife was angry -- at me for making them waste this holiday evening.

I had insisted that we go watch this movie because it had been praised by the famous political columnist George Will, whom I admired. Will wrote that the movie was "the greatest movie of all time".

Hard to believe now, Ferris Bueller's Day Off was discussed rather much in intellectual circles in 1986 as an important portrayal of fun-loving escapism and rebellion. This dopey 1986 praise has been criticized amusingly and retrospectively in a 2011 essay written by Alan Siegel, titled Get Over Ferris Bueller, Everyone.

The following video provides another amusing, restrospective criticism of the movie.

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Here is the movie's funniest scene.

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The movie's museum scene is charming. The scene is discussed intelligently in an essay written by Katie Nodjimbadem and titled How Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Perfectly Illustrates the Power of Art Museums.

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What Happened To The Girl Who Played Sloane In Ferris Bueller?