unfridged

Welcome to the first ever instalment of the BAMFiles, wherein I talk about the characters I like in ever increasing levels of zealousness! Brace yourselves, I make no promises as to the amount of all caps, exclamation marks, and excitable swearing you may find below.

To properly inaugurate this series, I had to pick someone cool. Someone totally confident and capable. Someone you’d definitely want to hang with. And who better than Audrey Ramirez, the teenaged genius engineer in Disney’s totally underrated Atlantis: The Lost Empire. There’s no real secret why Audrey deserves to be on this list: She’s sarcastic and takes zero guff from anyone, but she’s intensely good and is the first to switch sides when (teeny baby spoiler) it turns out that the expedition’s leader isn’t completely on the up and up. Audrey’s tough, and you want her fighting in your corner, both figuratively and literally.

We don’t get to know all that much about Audrey in the movie, but even though she can totally take care of herself, she’s very close to her family. She originally took the job in order to set up a repair shop with her father, who’s very proud of both Audrey and her boxing champion sister (even if he originally wanted sons). That’s really all we learn about her, but the Disney wiki has some more information:

The daughter of Master Mechanic Manuel Ramirez, Audrey Rocio displayed remarkable mechanical acuity from the time she could first walk. At the age of 18 months, she could completely disassemble and reassemble any clock in the Ramirez household. At the age of 3, Ana Ramirez found that young Audrey was able to foil any lock she encountered. Mrs. Ramirez despaired of trying to keep sweets in the house, as it became plain that no matter how complex or expensive the pantry lock was, Audrey could best it within minutes.

WHAT. How cool is that? She fixed cars AS A TODDLER. She got a job at the Henry Ford Automotive Plant at AGE NINE. AGE NINE. And she’s invaluable to the Atlantis mission. Aside from the fact that she basically single-handedly runs the coolest, Jules Verne-iest steampunk submarine, she manages to keep the thing together long enough to survive crossing paths WITH THE LEVIATHAN. Yeah. Just a brush with an old testament-level sea monster. No big.

There aren’t any YouTube clips of her available, but check out this short linetest to get a sense of how unflappable she is:

So anyway, Audrey makes it into the BAMFiles for being someone whom I desperately wanted to be like growing up. And really, who wouldn’t?