Matthew Broderick is giving us a time-out during the Super Bowl, and for a middle-aged, recession-weary public, the timing couldn’t be better.
Broderick, if you haven’t heard, is reviving Ferris Bueller, the school-cutting, life-loving teen of the 1986 movie. It is for just a brief time, but it is the quality of the moment, not the length, which matters.
The effort comes in the form of a commercial for Honda. That’s right, instead of the wickedly gorgeous, cherry-red Ferrari 250GT California, Ferris ditches work and gets his kicks in a red CRV.
But it works, not surprisingly. With smart writing, an eclectic soundtrack and a terrific cast, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off introduced lines that are still being used 26 years later, from “Bueller? Bueller?” to (more resonantly) “If you had access to a car like this, would you take it back right away?”
To our delight, many of these lines (as well as the Yello song “Oh Yeah”) are used in the ad, no doubt designed to get viewers of a certain age to nudge each other conspiratorially. Remember that? Wasn’t that great?
By uniting with Ferris, Honda is aligning itself with the free-spirited, adventurous youth who still lives, somewhere, in all of us. It is extending our loyalty from the principles of Ferris to the principles of Honda.
