My childhood crush on Alanna Ubach

I grew up with a crush on Alanna Ubach. She was a child actress during the 90s. Her teenage years were spent in front of the camera and I would spend my childhood watching her movies. Not that she was a big actress or anything or I searched for her movies, she just happened to be in some of my favorite movies growing up. She wasn't so much the girl the guy went for, she was more the funny friend of the girl the guy went for. She was funny though and had a lot of energy and I think that's why I liked her.

I first saw her when she use to be on Beakman's World. Beakman's World was kind of like Bill Nye the Science Guy on crack. A scientist that sounds like Steve Martin in My Blue Heaven does experiments for kids with the help of a man in a rat suit and a girl assistant. The show is like something you catch on Telemundo except in English. Anyway, Ubach was an assistant on the show and it was there I first developed a crush on her.

Beakman's World (Ubach is at 00:53)

After Beakman's World I saw her in three other movies. Each movie I saw her in, I liked her even more.

Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit

Still can't believe Maggie Smith made the mistake of being in a Whoopi movie twice.

To be fair, Ubach was just one of many child stars in this film. Whoopi Goldberg, returns in this unnecessary sequel which, to be honest, I liked more than the original. Goldberg teaches an inner city school how to become choir singers whose singing ends up saving the school from closing down. Her students include Jennifer Love Hewitt, Lauryn Hill before she went crazy and Ryan Toby, whose rap group would have one hit that has been stuck in my head for the past nine years. It was a school filled with the 90s idea of troubled city kids and only Whoopi can set them straight with her patented Whoopi attitude.

I always thought the red-headed nun was kinda hot.

Ubach played one of the students and of course, I recognized her right away. She's a peculiar looking girl and hard to miss. She wasn't a big part of the movie but now and then she always popped in with a nice one-liner. She wasn't Jennifer Love Hewitt or Lauryn Hill but she was adorable in her quirky way.

Airborne

This movie screams out XTREME.

The 90s were simpler times. Kids were just misunderstood and every awesome action sequence involved some sort of guitar-feedback soundtrack. Airborne was a fish out-of-water tale involving a super-cool and chill California dude (this guy was the ultimate dude) who moves in with his Aunt and Uncle in Cincinnati. There he befriends bullies who started out hating him and finds the girl of his dreams. Somehow he is involved in a super rad rollerblading race through the city against the rich kids (think like The Outsiders except with XTREME inline skating). What follows is a twenty minute racing sequence that, if any kid every tried to duplicate, would kill anybody on the spot.

Yes, that is a young Jack Black.

The above is the start of the last racing sequence. Don't worry about knowing the context of the race, there is none. The whole movie is just one set up for awesome inline skating through traffic so you might as well watch the best part of the movie. The love of my life, Alanna Ubach, plays the best friend of the romantic lead. Being the best friend of the hot girl she has such responsibilities as telling the girl its time to leave right before she kisses the hero and adding a few laughs on double date night. Ubach's love interest in this film is played by none other than Seth Green, perhaps you heard of him? Anyway its an awesome movie and Ubach has a big part in it. Plus it's XTREME.

Renaissance Man

Get it? He's short!

Similar to Sister Act 2, Renaissance Man is a about a gruff teacher thrown into a classroom with a bunch of rejects and a young Mark Wahlberg who have yet to find their potential. Instead of being about an inner city though it's set on a US army training base. Hilarity ensues as he tries to teach the lost causes about Shakespeare and, against all odds, gets through to them. Think like Dangerous Minds only instead of a Coolio song you have this:

For some reason all I could find is the German version. I'm ok with this.

Ubach plays Danny DeVito's estranged daughter who he reconnects with after he gets in touch with his humanity teaching the class.

She wasn't the most outstanding of girls in film when I was little but she was cute. She always stood out to me and she had personality. Not only that but I spotted her in three movies I grew up with as a child. These were movies I watched constant every time they were on television. I could probably still quote a lot of the lines. Since she was so adorable to me and in some important movies to me growing up, she will always hold a place in my heart. I wonder what happened to her?

Oh my....