[Retro Bunker] Elisabeth Shue

Name: Elisabeth Shue
Birthday: Oct. 6 1963
Miscellanea: Shue got her acting break in Burger King commercials.

There may be no better definition of tween-age love than the adoration that I had for Elisabeth Shue. It is a surprise for me to note that in some of her more iconic roles, she played a character quite a bit younger than her age. Most folks probably know that Ralph Macchio was aged 23 when he played high school senior Daniel Larusso in The Karate Kid, but I had no idea that my perfect love, Ali Mills, was portrayed by an actor old enough to buy me beer (Shue was aged 21).

When We Met:
The Karate Kid, obviously. Although there were a lot of differences between Danny Larusso and me (He was a skinny Italian kid from Jersey in Cali; I was a fat white kid in West Virginia), we shared a common bond: We didn’t fit in (I was 10, mind you. I was very popular later in life. Really. I swear.). And that was the appeal of Ali Mills. She took to a get-his-ass-beat-all-the-time new kid that spent a suspicious amount of time with his only friend – a strange foreign guy that worked as a maintenance man at a seedy apartment complex. This is a girl who truly cared only about what was on the inside! A perfect match for me.

And don’t forget just how well she could stand by her man! Mills punched Kobra-Kai badass Johnny in his grill when he dared intrude on Daniel’s space. It’s that kind of dedication that can cause one to fall in love.

Our Relationship:

It was a strong relationship. I watched The Karate Kid one way or another about 400 times. If I remember right, I had a recorded version from television on betamax prior to being able to rent it every third weekend. So it was not like my darling Shue was out of sight or mind for the three years until Adventures in Babysitting. Shue was 24 by the time that movie was released, but was still playing a teenage sweetheat perfectly. This time as nice girl babysitter turned
action star Chris Parker. Chris had to help the rugrats she was babysitting out of jam after jam as the movie progressed. The hyperactive trouble makers were almost too much for Chris to handle, but in the end she got the job done and the kids returned home safe and sound while an exhausted Parker, I’m sure, wished she was old enough for a couple of cold ones before bed.

That’s great, but every time I watched the movie I thought to myself, “If that was me, I’d want to be such a good boy. I bet she’d watch cartoons with me.” Of course the brats in the movie had other ideas which show a decided lack in taste. My love was solidified now.

Shue even got into uber geekville favorite and my favorite franchise of all time – Back to the Future (only films 2 and 3 as Jennifer Parker. I wonder if in the past she was a relative of Chris from Adventures in Babysitting?). By that time Shue was comfortably playing the same character that she had since TKK. But that was alright. I would still have fought for her honor.

Her one departure was in the early Tom Cruise vehicle Cocktail. In that movie Shue played the nice girl, still, but this time something closer to her actual age and, by the way, was in a bikini for most of the movie. I have no idea what the movie was about. Except that Shue was in a bikini for most of the movie. Although the emotional stimulus was not there like from TKK and Adventures, the movie still featured Shue in a bikini for most of it. So it had that going for it. Which I liked. And there was a bikini under a waterfall scene. I was 14 then. Cartoons didn’t matter too much any more.

When It Was Over:
Isn’t it strange that sometimes it is true when one is reminded, Be careful what you wish for? It’s not that I stared dating Shue (who is 11 years my senior – 25 when I was 14) and she punched me in the face and left me for Nicholas Cage. But it was something like that. After years of playing the good girl in goofy 80s long dresses and leggings; and after tantalizing by wearing a bikini in and out of waterfalls, Shue took on grown-up project, hung out with prostitutes, and co-starred as a prostitute with Nic Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. Critically speaking it was probably her best work. It was a very good tragic love story. She would also spend the rest of her peak alternating between movies with gratuitous nudity and other not quite as good tragic love stories (including another one with Nic Cage where Cage plays a freaking Angel).

But regardless, the spell was broken. After almost a decade of walking the line between girl next door cute and awesomely gorgeous, Shue meandered down the path of generic Female Lead in Love Story alternating with Sex Kitten. Though it was once adolescent perfection for Shue to spend the majority of a movie wearing a bikini in and out of waterfalls, it was too much to see the cute and possibly attainable girl next door become a major attraction due to the frequency of sex scenes.*

*Don’t get me wrong. I’m no prude. I have a whole list of stars from my teen-hood that I liked due to their frequency of sex scenes and nudity. It’s all a matter of how I came to love them.

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