The most wonderful thing about summer for me isn’t going to the beach, or the lack of homework, or even hanging out with friends. For me, the most wonderful thing about summer is the liberating feeling that grows in late June, when there’s not a cloud in the sky and you look forward only to the opportunity to doing absolutely nothing at all. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is that feeling filmed, edited, and released in theaters.

Written and directed by teen movie legend John Hughes (the man behind “Pretty In Pink,” “The Breakfast Club,” and “Sixteen Candles”), “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” follows the namesake character (Matthew Broderick) as he skips high school for a day a month before graduation to sneak off to nearby Chicago with his friend Cameron (Alan Ruck), and girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara). “How can I possibly be expected to handle school on a day like this?” Ferris asks us rhetorically as images of sunny skies and scattered clouds flash by, beckoning him away from his responsibilities. The rest of the movie is a dreamy joyride through the city in which Ferris and company, among other things, watch a baseball game, avoid parents, and, in a famous scene, hijack a German-American parade for a performance of “Twist and Shout.”

Ultimately, “Ferris Bueller” is less about its plot and more about a philosophy: a way to live life. Although Ferris may be the film’s protagonist and the one who constantly reaches through the fourth wall to lead us around his absurd world, many viewers of “Ferris Bueller” will feel more drawn to Cameron, whose pervasive caution and reluctance to flee his responsibilities clashes with Ferris’ unrestrained joie de vivre. Cameron is acutely aware that Ferris’ plan for his “day off” consists of absolutely nothing but living in the moment, as seen in long sequences of the trio looking at the city from the Sears Tower, sitting by a pool, or waiting in traffic.

Cameron’s worries are famously symbolized by the iconic Ferrari that Ferris takes from Cameron’s father’s garage. Throughout the film, Cameron is adamant that the car remain safe, lest his father realize the trio had taken it. Ferris, meanwhile, wants to live simply to live. Unlike Cameron, he and Sloane are unconcerned with consequences or duties, whereas Cameron is tied down by them. While watching the movie, we ask ourselves the same questions Cameron does: should he continue to look ahead, towards potential punishments, towards graduation, and towards the impending beginning of college? Or should he, like Ferris, live life for the simple pleasure of living it, enjoying only the present and making the most of every moment?

Cameron’s internal dilemma may lie at the center of this film, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. John Hughes had a gift for crafting slightly absurd recreations of his childhood in suburban Illinois. That talent is on full display here, as we peripherally follow several ridiculous sub-plots alongside the already hilarious main action. Examples include the farcical attempts by dean of students Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) to catch Ferris (Rooney’s long time white whale) in the act of playing hooky by breaking into his house, as well as the out-of-control fiction of Ferris’ illness that grows into a city-wide fundraising campaign to “Save Ferris.” Hughes’ films always seem as if they’re hovering just above reality, mimicking it while exaggerating and reconstructing it. The entire film shines with the self-aware joy we’ve come to expect from films of the 1980s.

So what makes “Ferris Bueller” a perfect summer movie, other than the fact that it’s a bucketload of fun? After all, the movie technically doesn’t even take place during the summer. However, it does evoke the feeling of summer, the promise of glorious stretches of empty time that only summer can bring us. In a way, Ferris is living our ideal summer. He does nothing and lives for the sake of living. No deadlines, no duties, just life.

But as teenagers, our priorities and ideas about summer are shifting. As our school year ends, we begin to look forward not to hours of unproductivity and fun, but to more responsibilities and structure: jobs, camps, and of course, the impending beginning of college. We are always acutely aware that our lives are changing, that a massive shift in how we live is on the horizon, and that we are standing on the cusp of adulthood and all the expectations and responsibilities that come with it. We become focused on what we live to accomplish and not on why we live. “Ferris Bueller” serves as not just a good time, but a timely reminder that life exists to be lived, and that sometimes just enjoying pure existence and the joy that comes with it, as Ferris does on his day off, is more important than deadlines, responsibilities, and obligations, the very things that hold Cameron back from enjoying life the same way Ferris does. Sometimes we need to forget all that and just take it all in.

It may just be a silly teen movie, but “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”’s central conflict between the Ferrisian and Cameronian (as I have just coined them) approaches to living is one that we will find ourselves thinking about more and more as we grow older. “Life moves pretty fast,” Ferris tells us. “If you don’t stop to look around once in a while, you might miss it.”