The Classic '80s Movie That Jack Nicholson Despised

Warner Bros.

Jack Nicholson had an undeniably impressive film career. From the outside looking in at least, he seemed to be riding high from his breakout role in 1969's "Easy Rider" all the way to 2007's "The Bucket List," before gracefully retiring from Hollywood in recent years. But although Nicholson would still be landing great roles deep into the 2000s, he was already starting to feel too old in 1986. In an '86 interview with the New York Times, Nicholson talked about how he watched "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Although this is arguably director John Hughes' best movie, Nicholson hated every moment of it. 

"That movie made me feel totally irrelevant to anything that any audience could want, and 119 years old" Nicholson explained. ”Believe me, everyone else watching it liked it. And you know, I literally walked out of there thinking my days are numbered. These people are trying to kill me."

At first glance you'd assume he was talking about the movie's celebration of youth; after all, the movie's all about suave teens having fun throughout Chicago while the stuffy adults keep trying to bring them down. To a middle-aged viewer, it's easy to see how the movie might feel like one giant 103-minute middle finger. But for Nicholson, his dislike of "Ferris Bueller" seemed more related to a troubling trend he'd noticed in Hollywood. 

According to the interviewer, Nicholson had talked about how Hollywood's "conglomeration" was limiting the overall creativity of Hollywood. When Nicholson brought up "Ferris Bueller," it was specifically in response to the question, "Do you feel like a creative person trapped in an uncreative age in the industry?"

Paramount Pictures

At first glance, it's hard to sympathize too much with Nicholson's complaint, especially since we now live in a time where creativity in Hollywood is arguably at an all-time low. With so much of the mainstream successes being sequels, remakes, revivals, or movies about toy products, I for one wish we could go back to a time when "Ferris Bueller" could be seen as a sign of a new low in Hollywood creativity. This movie, which is an entirely original story that grossed 14 times its budget at the box office, feels like a miracle from a 2024 perspective. 

But Nicholson was a guy whose acting career fully took off in the '70s, arguably the best decade ever for creativity in mainstream Hollywood. Whereas the '70s was (generally speaking) all about introspective dramas that pushed the boundaries of their medium and challenged their viewers, the '80s (generally speaking) was the decade where four-quadrant blockbusters really took off. In came the easy crowd-pleasers and all the action spectacle that came with them.  

"Ferris Bueller" wasn't a blockbuster, but it was a safe and breezy wide-appeal movie, one whose main goal was not really to challenge the status quo but to encourage the mindset of just doing whatever you want all the time with no consequences. Although the character arc for Cameron (aka the film's actual main character) was pretty thoughtful, the main appeal of "Ferris Bueller" is that it was a wish-fulfillment fantasy. For an actor like Jack Nicholson, famous for starring in evocative downer films like "The Shining" and "Chinatown," it's easy to see why he wouldn't like it.