Ferris Bueller's Day Off

As he was writing the film in 1985, John Hughes kept track of his progress in a spiral-bound logbook. He noted that the basic storyline was developed on February 25. It was successfully pitched the following day to Paramount Studios chief Ned Tanen. Tanen was intrigued by the concept, but wary that the Writers Guild of America was hours away from picketing the studio.[4] Hughes wrote the screenplay in less than a week.[5] Editor Paul Hirsch explained that Hughes had a trance-like concentration to his script-writing process, working for hours on end, and would later shoot the film on essentially what was his first draft of the script. "The first cut of Ferris Bueller's Day Off ended up at two hours, 45 minutes. The shortening of the script had to come in the cutting room", said Hirsch.[6] "Having the story episodic and taking place in one day...meant the characters were wearing the same clothes. I suspect that Hughes writes his scripts with few, if any costume changes just so he can have that kind of freedom in the editing."[6]

Hughes intended the movie to be more focused on the characters rather than the plot. "I know how the movie begins, I know how it ends", said Hughes. "I don't ever know the rest, but that doesn't seem to matter. It's not the events that are important, it's the characters going through the event. Therefore, I make them as full and real as I can. This time around, I wanted to create a character who could handle everyone and everything."[7]

Hughes said that he had Broderick in mind when he wrote the screenplay, saying Broderick was the only actor he could think of who could pull off the role, calling him clever and charming.[8] "Certain guys would have played Ferris and you would have thought, 'Where's my wallet?'" Hughes said. "I had to have that look; that charm had to come through. Jimmy Stewart could have played Ferris at 15...I needed Matthew."[8] Alan Ruck later told the AV Club that Anthony Michael Hall, who had previously worked with Hughes on three films, was originally offered the part but turned it down.[9] Other actors who were considered for the role included Jim Carrey, John Cusack, Tom Cruise and Michael J. Fox.[10]

Sara surprised Hughes when she auditioned for the role of Sloane Peterson. "It was funny. He didn't know how old I was and said he wanted an older girl to play the 17-year-old. He said it would take someone older to give her the kind of dignity she needed. He almost fell out of his chair when I told him I was only 18."[11] Molly Ringwald had also wanted to play Sloane, but according to Ringwald, "John wouldn't let me do it: he said that the part wasn't big enough for me."[4]

Ruck had previously auditioned for the Bender role in The Breakfast Club which went to Judd Nelson, but Hughes remembered Ruck and cast him as the 17-year-old Cameron Frye.[12] According to Hughes, the character of Cameron was largely based on a friend of his in high school. "He was sort of a lost person. His family neglected him, so he took that as license to really pamper himself. When he was legitimately sick, he actually felt good, because it was difficult and tiring to have to invent diseases but when he actually had something, he was relaxed."[13] Ruck said the role of Cameron had originally been offered to Emilio Estevez who turned it down. "Every time I see Emilio, I want to kiss him", said Ruck. "Thank you!"[4] Ruck, then 29, worried about the age difference. "I was worried that I'd be 10 years out of step, and I wouldn't know anything about what was cool, what was hip, all that junk. But when I was going to high school, I didn't know any of that stuff then, either. So I just thought, well, hell—I'll just be me. The character, he's such a loner that he really wouldn't give a damn about that stuff anyway. He'd feel guilty that he didn't know it, but that's it."[12] Ruck was not surprised to find himself cast young. "No, because, really, when I was 18, I sort of looked 12", he said. "Maybe it's a genetic imbalance."[12]

Ruck and Broderick had previously acted together in the Broadway production of Biloxi Blues. Cameron's Mr. Peterson voice was an in-joke imitation of their former director Gene Saks.[4] Ruck felt at ease working with Broderick, often crashing in his trailer. "We didn't have to invent an instant friendship like you often have to do in a movie", said Ruck. "We were friends."[4]

Jones was cast as Rooney based on his role in Amadeus, where he played the emperor; Hughes thought that character's modern equivalent was Rooney.[13] "My part was actually quite small in the script, but what seemed to be the important part to me was that I was the only one who wasn't swept along by Ferris", recalls Jones.[14] "So I was the only one in opposition, which presented a lot of opportunities, some of which weren't even in the script or were expanded on. John was receptive to anything I had to offer, and indeed got ideas along the way himself. So that was fun, working with him."[14] "Hughes told me at the time—and I thought he was just blowing his own horn—he said, 'You are going to be known for this for the rest of your life.' And I thought, 'Sure'... but he was right."[15] To help Jones study for the part, Hughes took him to meet his old vice principal. "This is the guy I want you to pay close attention to," Jones explained to Hughes' biographer Kirk Honeycutt. While meeting him, the VP's coat momentarily flew open revealing a holster and gun attached to the man's belt. This made Jones realize what Hughes had envisioned."The guy was 'Sign up for the Army quick before I kill you!'" Jones exclaimed.[16]

Stein says he got the role of Bueller's Economics teacher through six degrees of separation.[17] "Richard Nixon introduced me to a man named Bill Safire, who's a New York Times columnist. He introduced me to a guy who's an executive at Warner Brothers. He introduced me to a guy who's a casting director. He introduced me to John Hughes. John Hughes and I are among the only Republicans in the picture business, and John Hughes put me in the movie", Stein said.[17] Hughes said that Stein was an easy and early choice for the role of the teacher: "He wasn't a professional actor. He had a flat voice, he looked like a teacher."[13]

Southeast view of the house in Los Cerritos in Long Beach, California, used in the film

"Chicago is what I am," said Hughes.[2] "A lot of Ferris is sort of my love letter to the city. And the more people who get upset with the fact that I film there, the more I'll make sure that's exactly where I film. It's funny—nobody ever says anything to Woody Allen about always filming in New York. America has this great reverence for New York. I look at it as this decaying horror pit. So let the people in Chicago enjoy Ferris Bueller."[2]

The Ben Rose House, in Highland Park, Illinois, served as the filming location for Cameron Frye's House

For the film, Hughes got the chance to take a more expansive look at the city he grew up in. "We took a helicopter up the Chicago River. This is the first chance I'd really had to get outside while making a movie. Up to this point, the pictures had been pretty small. I really wanted to capture as much of Chicago as I could, not just the architecture and the landscape, but the spirit."[2] Shooting began in Chicago on September 9, 1985.[18] In late October 1985, the production moved to Los Angeles, and shooting ended on November 22.[19] The Von Steuben Day Parade scene was filmed on September 28. Scenes were filmed at several locations in downtown Chicago and Winnetka (Ferris's home, his mother's real estate office, etc.).[20] Many of the other scenes were filmed in Northbrook, Illinois, including at Glenbrook North High School, on School Drive, the long, curvy street on which Glenbrook North and neighboring Maple Middle School are situated.[21] The exterior of Ferris's house is located at 4160 Country Club Drive, Long Beach, California,[20] which at the time of filming was the childhood home of Judge Thad Balkman.[22]

The modernist house of Cameron Frye is located in Highland Park, Illinois. Known as the Ben Rose House,[23] it was designed by architects A. James Speyer, who designed the main building in 1954, and David Haid, who designed the pavilion in 1974. It was once owned by photographer Ben Rose, who had a car collection in the pavilion. In the film Cameron's father is portrayed as owning a Ferrari 250 GT California in the same pavilion.[24] According to Lake Forest College art professor Franz Shulze, during the filming of the scene where the Ferrari crashes out of the window, Haid explained to Hughes that he could prevent the car from damaging the rest of the pavilion.[25] Haid fixed connections in the wall and the building remained intact. Haid said to Hughes afterward, "You owe me $25,000", which Hughes paid.[25] In the DVD commentary for the film, Hughes mentions that they had to remove every pane of glass from the house to film the car crash scene, as every pane was weakened by age and had acquired a similar tint, hence replacement panels would be obvious. Hughes added that they were able to use the house because producer Ned Tanen knew the owner because they were both Ferrari collectors.[26] Other scenes were shot in Chicago, River Forest, Oak Park, Northbrook, Highland Park, Glencoe and Winnetka, Lake Forest and Long Beach, California.

Hughes says The Art Institute of Chicago was a "place of refuge" in his youth.

According to Hughes, the scene at the Art Institute of Chicago was "a self-indulgent scene of mine—which was a place of refuge for me, I went there quite a bit, I loved it. I knew all the paintings, the building. This was a chance for me to go back into this building and show the paintings that were my favorite." The museum had not been shot in, until the producers of the film approached them.[13] "I remember Hughes saying, 'There are going to be more works of art in this movie than there have ever been before,'" recalled Jennifer Grey.[4] Among notable works featured in this scene include A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Georges Seurat, 1884), during which Cameron struggles to find his identity in the face of one of the children in the painting, and America Windows (Marc Chagall, 1977), in front of which Ferris and Sloane have a romantic moment.[27]

According to editor Paul Hirsch, in the original cut, the museum scene fared poorly at test screenings until he switched sequences around and Hughes changed the soundtrack.[28]

The piece of music I originally chose was a classical guitar solo played on acoustic guitar. It was nonmetrical with a lot of rubato. I cut the sequence to that music and it also became nonmetrical and irregular. I thought it was great and so did Hughes. He loved it so much that he showed it to the studio but they just went "Ehhh." Then after many screenings where the audience said "The museum scene is the scene we like least", he decided to replace the music. We had all loved it, but the audience hated it. I said, 'I think I know why they hate the museum scene. It's in the wrong place.' Originally, the parade sequence came before the museum sequence, but I realized that the parade was the highlight of the day, there was no way we could top it, so it had to be the last thing before the three kids go home. So that was agreed upon, we reshuffled the events of the day, and moved the museum sequence before the parade. Then we screened it and everybody loved the museum scene! My feeling was that they loved it because it came in at the right point in the sequence of events. John felt they loved it because of the music. Basically, the bottom line is, it worked.[28]

The music used for the final version of the museum sequence is an instrumental cover version of The Smiths' "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want", performed by The Dream Academy. A passionate Beatles fan, Hughes makes multiple references to them and John Lennon in the script. During filming, Hughes "listened to The White Album every single day for fifty-six days".[29] Hughes also pays tribute to his childhood hero Gordie Howe with Cameron's Detroit Red Wings jersey.[30] "I sent them the jersey", said Howe. "It was nice seeing the No. 9 on the big screen."[31]

A 1961 Ferrari GT California

In the film, Ferris convinces Cameron to borrow his father's rare 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder. "The insert shots of the Ferrari were of the real 250 GT California", Hughes explains in the DVD commentary. "The cars we used in the wide shots were obviously reproductions. There were only 100 of these cars, so it was way too expensive to destroy. We had a number of replicas made. They were pretty good, but for the tight shots I needed a real one, so we brought one in to the stage and shot the inserts with it."[13]

Prior to filming, Hughes learned about Modena Design and Development who produced the Modena Spyder California, a replica of the Ferrari 250 GT.[32] Hughes saw a mention of the company in a car magazine and decided to research them. Neil Glassmoyer recalls the day Hughes contacted him to ask about seeing the Modena Spyder:

The first time he called I hung up on him because I thought it was a friend of mine who was given to practical jokes. Then he called back and convinced me it really was him, so Mark and I took the car to his office. While we were waiting outside to meet Hughes this scruffy-looking fellow came out of the building and began looking the car over; we thought from his appearance he must have been a janitor or something. Then he looked up at a window and shouted, 'This is it!' and several heads poked out to have a look. That scruffy-looking fellow was John Hughes, and the people in the window were his staff. Turned out it was between the Modena Spyder and a Porsche Turbo, and Hughes chose the Modena.[32]

Automobile restorationist Mark Goyette designed the kits for three reproductions used in the film and chronicled the whereabouts of the cars today:[33]

1. "Built by Goyette and leased to Paramount for the filming. It's the one that jumps over the camera, and is used in almost every shot. At the end of filming, Paramount returned it to Goyette, with the exhaust crushed and cracks in the body. "There was quite a bit of superficial damage, but it held up amazingly well", he said. He rebuilt it, and sold it to a young couple in California. The husband later ran it off the road, and Goyette rebuilt the front end for him. That owner sold it in the mid-90s, and it turned up again around 2000, but hasn't emerged since."[33]
2. "Sold to Paramount as a kit for them to assemble as their stunt car, they did such a poor job that it was basically unusable, aside from going backwards out the window of Cameron's house. Rebuilt, it ended up at Planet Hollywood in Minneapolis and was moved to Planet Hollywood in Cancun when this one was closed."[33]
3. "Another kit, supposed to be built as a shell for the out the window scene, it was never completed at all, and disappeared after the film was completed. Goyette thinks he once heard it was eventually completed and sold off, but it could also still be in a back lot at Paramount."[33]

One of the "replicars" was sold by Bonhams on April 19, 2010, at the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon, United Kingdom for £79,600.[34][35]

Another "replicar" used in the movie, serial number 001, referenced as the "hero car" that Goyette stated "hasn't emerged since" was sold at the 2020 Scottsdale Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction on January 18, 2020 for $396,000 USD.[36]

The "replicar" was "universally hated by the crew", said Ruck. "It didn't work right." The scene in which Ferris turns off the car to leave it with the garage attendant had to be shot a dozen times because it would not start.[4] The car was built with a real wheel base, but used a Ford V8 engine instead of a V12.[37] At the time of filming, the original 250 GT California model was worth $350,000.[4] Since the release of the film, it has become one of the most expensive cars ever sold, going at auction in 2008 for $10,976,000[38] and more recently in 2015 for $16,830,000.[39] The vanity plate of Cameron's dad's Ferrari spells NRVOUS and the other plates seen in the film are homages to Hughes's earlier works, VCTN (National Lampoon's Vacation), TBC (The Breakfast Club), MMOM (Mr. Mom), as well as 4FBDO (Ferris Bueller's Day Off).

Ben Stein's famous monotonous lecture about the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act was not originally in Hughes's script. Stein, by happenstance, was lecturing off-camera to the amusement of the student cast. "I was just going to do it off camera, but the student extras laughed so hard when they heard my voice that (Hughes) said do it on camera, improvise, something you know a lot about. When I gave the lecture about supply-side economics, I thought they were applauding. Everybody on the set applauded. I thought they were applauding because they had learned something about supply-side economics. But they were applauding because they thought I was boring. ... It was the best day of my life", Stein said.[17]

The parade scene took multiple days of filming; Broderick spent some time practicing the dance moves. "I was very scared", Broderick said. "Fortunately, the sequence was carefully choreographed beforehand. We worked out all the moves by rehearsing in a little studio. It was shot on two Saturdays in the heart of downtown Chicago. The first day was during a real parade, and John got some very long shots. Then radio stations carried announcements inviting people to take part in 'a John Hughes movie'. The word got around fast and 10,000 people showed up! For the final shot, I turned around and saw a river of people. I put my hands up at the end of the number and heard this huge roar. I can understand how rock stars feel. That kind of reaction feeds you."[40][41]

Broderick's moves were choreographed by Kenny Ortega (who later choreographed Dirty Dancing). Much of it had to be scrapped though as Broderick had injured his knee badly during the scenes of running through neighbors' backyards. "I was pretty sore", Broderick said. "I got well enough to do what you see in the parade there, but I couldn't do most of Kenny Ortega's knee spins and things like that that we had worked on. When we did shoot it, we had all this choreography and I remember John would yell with a megaphone, 'Okay, do it again, but don't do any of the choreography,' because he wanted it to be a total mess." "Danke Schoen" was somewhat choreographed but for "Twist and Shout", Broderick said, "we were just making everything up".[4] Hughes explained that much of the scene was spontaneously filmed. "It just happened that this was an actual parade, which we put our float into—unbeknownst to anybody, all the people on the reviewing stand. Nobody knew what it was, including the governor."[13]

Ferris Bueller Night at Wrigley Field, October 1, 2011.

Wrigley Field is featured in two interwoven and consecutive scenes. In the first scene, Rooney is looking for Ferris at a pizza joint while the voice of Harry Caray announces the action of a ballgame that is being shown on TV. From the play-by-play descriptions, the uniforms, and the player numbers, this game has been identified as the June 5, 1985, game between the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago Cubs.[18][42] The batter rips a foul ball into the left field stands, and as Rooney looks away from the TV briefly, the TV cameras show a close up of Ferris a moment after catching it. The scene in the pizza joint continues as Rooney tries to banter about the game with the guy behind the counter.

In the next scene, Sloane, Cameron, and Ferris are in the left field stands inside Wrigley. Ferris flexes his hand in pain after supposedly catching the foul ball. During this scene, the characters enjoy the game and joke about what they would be doing if they had played by the rules. All these "in the park" shots, including the one from the previous scene where Ferris catches the foul ball on TV, were filmed on September 24, 1985, at a game between the Montreal Expos and the Cubs. During the 1985 season, the Braves and the Expos both wore powder blue uniforms during their road games. And so, with seamless editing by Hughes, it is difficult to distinguish that the game being seen and described in the pizza joint is not only a different game (the man at the pizzeria refers to the team playing as the NFL's Chicago Bears) but also a different Cubs' opponent than the one filmed inside the stadium.[43]

John Hughes had originally wanted to film the scene at the baseball game at Comiskey Park, as Hughes was a Chicago White Sox fan. However, due to time constraints, the location was moved to Wrigley Field at the last minute.

On October 1, 2011, Wrigley Field celebrated the 25th anniversary of the film by showing it on three giant screens on the infield.[44]

Throughout the film a background sub-plot is developed that the public have heard that Ferris is very ill and are raising funds to save him. Several freshmen talk to Ferris on the phone and deduce that he is dying. In school, a teen is collecting money for Ferris and asks Jeanie for a donation. Jeanie swears at him and knocks the collection can out of his hands. Throughout the city the words 'Save Ferris' appear in various locations such as the Wrigley Field main entry marquee and a water tower. When the family arrives home, the hallway is filled with balloons and flowers wishing Ferris well.

Several scenes were cut from the final film; one lost scene entitled "The Isles of Langerhans" has the three teenagers trying to order in the French restaurant, shocked to discover pancreas on the menu (although in the finished film, Ferris still says, "We ate pancreas", while recapping the day). This is featured on the Bueller, Bueller Edition DVD. Other scenes were never made available on any DVD version.[45] These scenes included additional screen time with Jeanie in a locker room, Ferris' younger brother and sister (both of whom were completely removed from the film), and additional lines of dialogue throughout the film, all of which can be seen in the original theatrical trailer. Hughes had also wanted to film a scene where Ferris, Sloane, and Cameron go to a strip club. Paramount executives told him there were only so many shooting days left, so the scene was scrapped.[4]

An official soundtrack was not originally released for the film, as director John Hughes felt the songs would not work well together as a continuous album.[46] However, according to an interview with Lollipop Magazine, Hughes noted that he had sent 100,000 7" vinyl singles containing two songs featured in the film to members of his fan mailing list.[47]

Hughes gave further details about his refusal to release a soundtrack in the Lollipop interview:

The only official soundtrack that Ferris Bueller's Day Off ever had was for the mailing list. A&M was very angry with me over that; they begged me to put one out, but I thought "who'd want all of these songs?" I mean, would kids want "Danke Schoen" and "Oh Yeah" on the same record? They probably already had "Twist and Shout", or their parents did, and to put all of those together with the more contemporary stuff, like the (English) Beat—I just didn't think anybody would like it. But I did put together a seven-inch of the two songs I owned the rights to—"Beat City" on one side, and... I forget, one of the other English bands on the soundtrack... and sent that to the mailing list. By '86, '87, it was costing us $30 a piece to mail out 100,000 packages. But it was a labor of love.[47]

"Danke Schoen" is one of the recurring motifs in the film and is sung by Ferris, Ed Rooney, and Jeanie. Hughes called it the "most awful song of my youth. Every time it came on, I just wanted to scream, claw my face. I was taking German in high school—which meant that we listened to it in school. I couldn't get away from it."[13] According to Broderick, Ferris's singing "Danke Schoen" in the shower was his idea. "Although it's only because of the brilliance of John's deciding that I should sing "Danke Schoen" on the float in the parade. I had never heard the song before. I was learning it for the parade scene. So we're doing the shower scene and I thought, 'Well, I can do a little rehearsal.' And I did something with my hair to make that Mohawk. And you know what good directors do: they say, 'Stop! Wait until we roll.' And John put that stuff in."[48]

The soundtrack for the film, limited to 5,000 copies, was released on September 13, 2016 by La-La Land Records. The album includes new wave and pop songs featured in the film, as well as Ira Newborn's complete score, including unused cues.[49] Due to licensing restrictions, "Twist and Shout," "Taking The Day Off," and "March of the Swivelheads" were not included, but are available elsewhere. The Flowerpot Men's "Beat City" makes its first official release on CD with a new mix done by The Flowerpot Men's Ben Watkins and Adam Peters that differs from the original 7" fan club release.[49][50]

The film largely received positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars, calling it "one of the most innocent movies in a long time," and "a sweet, warm-hearted comedy."[51] Richard Roeper called the film "one of my favorite movies of all time. It has one of the highest 'repeatability' factors of any film I've ever seen ... I can watch it again and again. There's also this, and I say it in all sincerity: Ferris Bueller's Day Off is something of a suicide prevention film, or at the very least a story about a young man trying to help his friend gain some measure of self-worth ... Ferris has made it his mission to show Cameron that the whole world in front of him is passing him by, and that life can be pretty sweet if you wake up and embrace it. That's the lasting message of Ferris Bueller's Day Off."[52] Roeper pays homage to the film with a license plate that reads "SVFRRIS".[53] Conservative columnist George Will hailed Ferris as "the moviest movie," a film "most true to the general spirit of the movies, the spirit of effortless escapism."[54]

Essayist Steve Almond called Ferris "the most sophisticated teen movie [he] had ever seen," adding that while Hughes had made a lot of good movies, Ferris was the "one film [he] would consider true art, [the] only one that reaches toward the ecstatic power of teendom [sic] and, at the same time, exposes the true, piercing woe of that age." Almond also applauded Ruck's performance, going so far as saying he deserved the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor of 1986: "His performance is what elevates the film, allows it to assume the power of a modern parable."[55] The New York Times reviewer Nina Darnton criticized Mia Sara's portrayal of Sloane for lacking "the specific detail that characterized the adolescent characters in Hughes's other films", asserting she "created a basically stable but forgettable character."[56][57] Conversely, Darnton praised Ruck and Grey's performances: "The two people who grow in the movie—Cameron, played with humor and sensitivity by Alan Ruck, and Ferris's sister Jeanie, played with appropriate self-pity by Jennifer Grey—are the most authentic. Grey manages to play an insufferably sulky teen-ager who is still attractive and likable."[56]

Co-star Ben Stein was exceptionally moved by the film, calling it "the most life-affirming movie possibly of the entire post-war period."[58] "This is to comedies what Gone with the Wind is to epics," Stein added. "It will never die, because it responds to and calls forth such human emotions. It isn't dirty. There's nothing mean-spirited about it. There's nothing sneering or sniggering about it. It's just wholesome. We want to be free. We want to have a good time. We know we're not going to be able to all our lives. We know we're going to have to buckle down and work. We know we’re going to have to eventually become family men and women, and have responsibilities and pay our bills. But just give us a couple of good days that we can look back on."[59]

National Review writer Mark Hemingway lauded the film's celebration of liberty. "If there's a better celluloid expression of ordinary American freedom than Ferris Bueller's Day Off, I have yet to see it. If you could take one day and do absolutely anything, piling into a convertible with your best girl and your best friend and taking in a baseball game, an art museum, and a fine meal seems about as good as it gets," wrote Hemingway.[60]

Others were less enamored with Ferris, many taking issue with the film's "rebel without a cause" hedonism. David Denby of New York Magazine, called the film "a nauseating distillation of the slack, greedy side of Reaganism."[61] Author Christina Lee agreed, adding it was a "splendidly ridiculous exercise in unadulterated indulgence," and the film "encapsulated the Reagan era's near solipsist worldview and insatiable appetite for immediate gratification—of living in and for the moment...."[62] Gene Siskel panned the film from a Chicago-centric perspective saying "Ferris Bueller doesn't do anything much fun ... [t]hey don't even sit in the bleachers where all the kids like to sit when they go to Cubs games."[63] Siskel did enjoy the chemistry between Jennifer Grey and Charlie Sheen. Ebert thought Siskel was too eager to find flaws in the film's view of Chicago.[63]

It has an aggregate "Certified Fresh" score of 80% (based on 65 critics' reviews) on Rotten Tomatoes, and an average rating of 7.71/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Matthew Broderick charms in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, a light and irrepressibly fun movie about being young and having fun."[64] Metacritic gave the film a score of 61 based on 13 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[65]

Broderick was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in 1986 for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

The film opened in 1,330 theaters in the United States and had a total weekend gross of $6,275,647, opening at #2. Ferris Bueller's Day Off's total gross in the United States was approximately $70,136,369, making it a box office success.[1] It subsequently became the 10th-highest-grossing film of 1986.[66]

As an influential and popular film, Ferris Bueller's Day Off has been included in many film rating lists. The film is number 54 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies", came 26th in the British 50 Greatest Comedy Films and ranked number 10 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "50 Best High School Movies".[67]

The film's influence in popular culture extends beyond the film itself to how musical elements of the film have been received as well, for example, Yello's song "Oh Yeah". As Jonathan Bernstein explains, "Never a hit, this slice of Swiss-made tomfoolery with its varispeed vocal effects and driving percussion was first used by John Hughes to illustrate the mouthwatering must-haveness of Cameron's dad's Ferrari. Since then, it has become synonymous with avarice. Every time a movie, TV show or commercial wants to underline the jaw-dropping impact of a hot babe or sleek auto, that synth-drum starts popping and that deep voice rumbles, 'Oh yeah . . .'"[83] Yello was unheard of in the United States at the time, but the inclusion of their song in Ferris Bueller and The Secret of My Success the following year sparked great interest in the song, where it reached the Billboard "Hot 100" and US Dance charts in 1987.[84][85] It often became referred to as "the Ferris Bueller song" due to its attachment with the movie.[86] Dieter Meier of Yello was able to use the licensing fees from "Oh Yeah"'s appearance in Ferris Bueller and other films to start a series of investments and amassed a large fortune.[87]

While Paul McCartney admitted that he liked the movie, he personally disliked the "Twist and Shout" sequence for its inclusion of brass instruments.[88]

Concerning the influence of another song used in the film, Roz Kaveney writes that some "of the finest moments in later teen film draw on Ferris's blithe Dionysian fervour — the elaborate courtship by song in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) draws usefully on the "Twist and Shout" sequence in Ferris Bueller's Day Off".[89] "Twist and Shout" charted again, 16 years after the Beatles broke up, as a result of its prominent appearance in both this film and Back To School (where Rodney Dangerfield performs a cover version) which was released the same weekend as Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The re-released single reached #23 in the U.S; a US-only compilation album containing the track The Early Beatles, re-entered the album charts at #197. The version heard in the film includes brass overdubbed onto the Beatles' original recording, which did not go down well with Paul McCartney. "I liked [the] film but they overdubbed some lousy brass on the stuff! If it had needed brass, we'd had stuck it on ourselves!"[88] Upon hearing McCartney's reaction, Hughes felt bad for "offend[ing] a Beatle. But it wasn't really part of the song. We saw a band [onscreen] and we needed to hear the instruments."[13]

The bands Save Ferris and Rooney were named in allusion to Ferris Bueller's Day Off.[90]

Broderick and Hughes stayed in touch for a while after production. "We thought about a sequel to Ferris Bueller, where he'd be in college or at his first job, and the same kind of things would happen again. But neither of us found a very exciting hook to that. The movie is about a singular time in your life."[48] "Ferris Bueller is about the week before you leave school, it's about the end of school—in some way, it doesn't have a sequel. It's a little moment and it's a lightning flash in your life. I mean, you could try to repeat it in college or something but it's a time that you don't keep. So that's partly why I think we couldn't think of another", Broderick added. "But just for fun", said Ruck, "I used to think why don't they wait until Matthew and I are in our seventies and do Ferris Bueller Returns and have Cameron be in a nursing home. He doesn't really need to be there, but he just decided his life is over, so he committed himself to a nursing home. And Ferris comes and breaks him out. And they go to, like, a titty bar and all this ridiculous stuff happens. And then, at the end of the movie, Cameron dies."[4]