Matthew Broderick Vs. French Toast

The Case For Matthew Broderick

For starters, we'll say right off the top that Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a masterpiece. If The Breakfast Club is John Hughes's Godfather, then Bueller is his Apocalypse Now. (And Curly Sue, we suppose, would be his Bram Stoker's Dracula.)

And, of course, there's no day off without Ferris. The wry asides, the sly grin, the cheeky giggle: there have been few roles in film history better matched to an actor than this one.

Matthew Broderick, however, has continued to bring that same odd, affected detachment to every single role he plays. It's not a shtick (the way Pacino has a shtick) or even a style, so much as that just appears to be the way he is.

Now, in every movie, be it Inspector Gadget or Election, he always seems like at any moment he's going to turn to the camera and make a dry comment. He's not delivering his lines; he's "delivering his lines." His whole career is in air-quotes.

Not surprisingly, he's had trouble finding suitable post-Ferris roles that match up with this unusual demeanor. Also, it doesn't help that he apparently sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber every night, and hasn't aged a day since 1986.

So Broderick's had, to put it kindly, a spotty movie career. He's succeeded of late when he's applied his weird detachment to characters who are morally adrift: the skeevy high-school teacher in Election, or the philandering boss in You Can Count On Me. But looking back, Broderick, for someone who doesn't seem to work all that much, has been in an avalanche of stinkers: Gadget, Godzilla, The Road to Wellville, The Night We Never Met, The Freshman, The Stepford Wives, The Cable Guy. (Whatever worked about The Cable Guy, it wasn't him.) His latest, The Producers, might not belong up there (down there?) with Stepford Wives, but it's certainly not likely to make anyone change his or her breakfast order. By which we mean...

The Case For French Toast

We don't eat French toast all that often. We never make it at home, and when we're out, we always feel guilty about the whole bread-dipped-in-egg-fried-in-butter thing. When the anti-carb faction can make you feel bad about eating a ciabatta roll, you're not going to feel too good about eating what is essentially a German strudel with syrup all over it and calling it "breakfast."

(At my university cafeteria, they used to take day-old French toast, deep-fry it, then serve it as something called "German toast." Which seemed not only like an incredibly unhealthy meal to eat, especially first thing in the morning, but also like an weirdly poetic, culinary comment on the history of Europe in the twentieth century.)

That said, in the right place, at the right time, is there anything better than French toast? After, say, a night of ill-considered carousing, when your head's pounding just a little bit? And the waitress sets down that plate of egg-dipped-butter-fried goodness? Dr. Atkins, you can choke on a ciabatta.

French toast is not something we'd eat every day (because if we did, we'd die. Fast), nor even every week. But every so often? Oh, yes. French toast is like medicine. Medicine with syrup on it. It's good to know it's there when you need it most.

The Decision

To put it simply: how often do you enjoy Matthew Broderick, and how often do you enjoy French toast? Yes, that's what we thought. We'll miss never getting to watch Ferris Bueller ever again, but we know just how to console ourselves. Pass the syrup.

The Winner

French Toast