Ferris Bueller's Day Off: Bueller...Bueller...Edition DVD Review

Much has been made of this new release's improved picture quality, however in reality the difference between this release and it's previous incarnation is negligible. Colours are very impressive, with a rich and vivid palette, nice skin tones and solid blacks. Alas, Ferris Bueller's Day Off is showing its age in almost every other department. The print itself displays dirt and damage, and the picture ranges from reasonably sharp to soft and quite grainy. Mercifully little in the way of digital artefacts are present, but the clarity of the format does tend to show up a great deal of the flaws in this ageing presentation.

Presented in a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, this does the job in a workmanlike and unspectacular fashion, which is not surprising given that the movies original theatrical track was 2.0. It's not a bad track by any means, audio is clear and nicely mixed, and the rears do get some action through the films cracking soundtrack. There's little involvement from the LFE channel, and the sound overall is a tad flat and unexpressive unfortunately. Perfectly adequate if not exactly awe inspiring.

Getting The Cast Together The Cast Of 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' runs at just under half an hour and is a very good retrospective indeed, with plenty of archive footage, and past and present interviews with cast and crew.

Following this there is a 'Making of' which follows the same format and runs for a quarter of an hour.

'Who is Ferris Bueller?' is a look in more depth at the main character predominantly through the eyes of his creator, John Hughes.

'The World According To Ben Stein' features interviews with Ferris' teacher and is perhaps a touch superfluous given Stein's very limited role in the movie.

'Vintage Ferris Bueller: The Lost Tapes' offers plenty of archival footage where Broderick interviews cast members in a spoofy style.

'Class Album' provides a brief photo gallery.

This is a very satisfying selection of extras, however Paramount have made the somewhat nonsensical decision to exclude John Hughes' audio commentary, which was previously the only additional supplement on the rather bare original release. There is also no inclusion of any deleted scenes that Hughes himself drew reference to in the elusive missing commentary. Having said that, there is plenty of archive footage here of the majesty of the John Hughes mullet which cheered me up no end, so it's not all doom and gloom. Pat Sharp, eat your heart out.
Hughes' finest hour, this marvellous film is one of cinema's most enduring teenpics. This is a very nice and overdue SE from Paramount, however the lack of audio commentary means it's far from definitive and true fans will have to face a double dip