Surprisingly imaginative at times, and tedious at others.
As Donald Duck and his two "caballeros"--a Brazilian parrot named José Carioca and a Mexican rooster known as Panchito--danced in a "Fantasia"-like sequence and their bodies morphed for a time on top of three pairs of live-action female legs, my 10-year-old son remarked, "Now that's just wrong." My 6-year-old daughter, meanwhile, came to life during those musical sequences and had all to do to keep from getting up and dancing herself. I'm guessing that's the way these strange birds of Disney animation will play for many contemporary young viewers.
Partly, "The Three Caballeros" feels like a South-of-the-Border "Fantasia," with the same kind of inventive animated transformations involving a lot of inanimate objects. Partly, it feels like one of those specials that aired on the old "Mickey Mouse Club" when a group of dancers from another country performed on stage (at great length). Partly, it's like one of the Disney travelogues that aired at times on the old "Walt Disney Presents" and "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" shows. And partly it's a Donald Duck cartoon. The narrative is mostly a voiceover tour guide who, in "The Three Caballeros" as well as in the companion "Saludos Amigos" included here, takes viewers on cartoon-live action tours of the South Pole, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. It's the kind of show where you half expect Walt Disney himself to pop up and interact with the characters at some point.
These are being billed as "2 movies, 1 hot price," but the total run-time is just 113 minutes. Although both films feel like patchworks, "Saludos Amigos" (1942) has the most continuity and, no surprise, it's because it's the most like a travelogue. There's a ton of vintage (1940s) live-action footage of the Latin American locations that Walt Disney and his crew visited in 1941 at the request of the U.S. Government, who wanted the well-known filmmaker to do a Good Will tour. Disney said he wasn't much of a glad-hander, but agreed to go when the U.S. said they'd subsidize the trip if he did what he did best and just used the trip to do research to make movies. Four cartoon shorts came out of the trip, and they were so successful in the theaters that Disney didn't take the subsidy . . . though he quips in a CBC interview included here that he could have used it for "The Three Caballeros. So basically "Saludos Amigos" is a documentary about that trip, with the four cartoons intercut to show the fruits of their travels.
If you've seen any of the Disney travelogues from that era, you know that they can be pretty slow-paced and the cameras can really linger on an activity that modern audiences would be perfectly happy to just glimpse. The long live-action dance routines and performances were a little too much for my children, who asked me to turn off the film mid-way. They only perked during cartoon segments featuring Donald as a tourist in Bolivia, a little "mail plane who could" in Chile, José Carioca in "Aquarela do Brasil" (a watercolor artist-painting-as-the-characters-move musical number), and Goofy in "El Gaucho Goofy," which has more voiceover narration about an Argentine cowboy than it does narration. The real interest for adults, though-and I'm guessing that this will have the greatest appeal for Disneyphiles-are the scenes showing how Disney interacted with his staff on the road in make-shift hotel studios. We also see some of the now-legendary Disney artists at their sketch pads, as we look over their shoulders to see characters take shape. For me, that was of much greater interest than old travel footage or a strained attempt to blend animation and travelogue-though I can see where people might also like seeing planes, cars, and dresses from the 1930s.
"The Three Caballeros" held my kids attention more, probably because it began with animation and only toward the last third incorporated live-action sequences to a large degree. a penguin who wanted to leave the South Pole for warmer climes, a donkey that could fly, and "A Visit with More Rare Birds" that's basically an animated guide (with gags) to Amazon species. The framework is shaky at best. Donald gets a special delivery box for his birthday, including a newsreel that he beams up on his screen and transports him to all of these places. But at some point that concept falls by the wayside along with the discarded wrapping paper, and Donald becomes a part of the action. Things really get strange when the cigar-smoking José Carioca shows up and gets Donald to try some Brazilian moonshine (yep, smoking and drinking). And then the concept shifts to a pop-up book, with José giving Donald a tour of his beloved Brazil and Donald needing to be restrained every time a beautiful live-action woman walks past. A cookie lady walks past, and while you'd think Donald would go for the goodies, he's interested in her goodies instead. That's nothing, compared to how the unintelligible Duck behaves on the beach at Acapulco. In Mexico the pair are joined by Panchito, who gives them all sombreros and takes them on a flying carpet (well, serape) tour of Mexico that will remind Disney theme park fans of the Soarin' ride. But in the very end, look for it all to morph into a kaleidoscopic, high-energy, non-stop music video that's every bit as strange and improvisational as "Fantasia."
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[release]23573[/release]