It’s really interesting what nearly 35 years does to the lens of perspective. When my friend invited me to join her family for their once-a-month movie night, she asked which John Hughes movie she should show her 14-year-old twins. The answer was obvious. It had to be something fun, school-related, and iconic. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off seemed to be the perfect choice as we Gen X-ers loved it when we were exactly their age in 1986.

The fraternal twins (one boy, one girl) sat down on a rare early Saturday evening when neither had dance practice or a sleepover. We gathered in our comfy clothes, popped some popcorn, and hit “rent now.”

They were excited by the opening scene, where an adorable Matthew Broderick (doesn’t matter what generation one is, he transcends them all) is pretending to be sick in bed with worrying parents. His sister Jeanie is suspicious and exhausted by his antics, but Ferris prevails. He then proceeds to give a brilliant monologue about eating life up and living in the moment. His now-famous line, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it,” is still plastered in quote books and on Bumble profiles.

The twins seemed inspired, and one of them actually teared up in the first five minutes.

Spoilers ahead: the movie is pretty simple. Ferris is a super cool high school kid with a beautiful girlfriend, Sloane, played by Mia Sara. His best friend is a depressed hypochondriac named Cameron, who is played to perfection by Alan Ruck. Ferris skips school a lot (nine times!) and grabs each day by the neck. There are themes of Hedonism, Nihilism, and Taoism, but neither of the twins mentioned that.

Not everyone saw Ferris as a........

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