The Three Caballeros (1944)

What did I even watch? I don’t even know how to continue with this movie. This week, we had The Three Caballeros. I’m going to be truthful, I had no idea what to expect with this movie. Based on the name, I figured it was some sort of adventure following the world and characters set up in Saludos Amigos. Boy, was I wrong…

Original Poster Sourced via IMDB

Summary: I don’t really know what to tell you here. This movie is framed with Donald Duck opening birthday presents from his friends from south of the border, but it doesn’t stay on that track for long. The movie starts off with some shorts, making you think that this is just Saludos Amigos 2, but then it takes a hard right into crazyville.

First off, let’s focus on the stuff I liked. The art and animation for this film is easily much better than Saludos Amigos. It’s relatively good in it’s own right, though it still does just feel like an extended short. The scenes that combine animation and live action are actually really decent for the time, though they do look dated. This movie would be great for kids, as it’s frantic action would match their speed and the movie does offer some educational moments and is a fun introduction to some cultures that they may not have normal interaction with.

The only sequence I really liked was The Cold-Blooded Penguin segment. It told a pretty decent story an it makes sense. I also have a bit of nostalgia for this segment, because I either watched it as a kid, seperately, or I read it in one of those Disney Golden books. Either way, a pretty decent segment that’s well introduced by a survey of the birds in South America.

However, following this, we are brought to a short about kid who finds a flying donkey and using it to race. Again, it’s pretty decent, but nothing to write home about. After this, the movie falls apart. Soon after, we are introduced to José Carioca. After dancing scene that’s a combination of live action and animation, we are then introduced to Panchito Pistoles. From here on out, it’s basically just dancing scene after dancing scene with live action people and trippy animation combined. And that’s the rest of the movie.

It loses any context, any story, any grounding in a narrative. Now, in other instances, we’ve had parts of movies that were just a pure expression of animation. The difference here is that all the animation is pretty tired. It’s either our main characters badly interacting with the live action dancers/actors by just watching them, or it’s gaudy explosions of colors and shapes. Either way, it’s not very engaging and doesn’t express much animated talent.

You shall WORSHIP!

The movie becomes senseless and, in doing so, it commits the worst sin of all. It just becomes boring. I hate to say, but for most of the movie, I was hoping that it would end soon. And the worst part is that they waste this group of characters on this lazy film. It would have just been nice to see these three birds having adventures in South and Central America. Or even a series of shorts, which follow these three birds in many different adventures.

All in all, pretty disappointing, confusing and overall boring film. I came into it a bit excited and I didn’t realize until now that this is my least favorite so far. Hopefully, next week’s Make Mine Music will be better.

-CJ

This week we continued our trip down the war time series with the Three Caballeros (1944). I went into this film thinking it was a bunch of shorts featuring Donald, Jose, and Panchito. I was hoping for structure, a decent bit of animation, and maybe some songs sang by the three main characters. Boy was I wrong… This movie just confuses me to no end. It starts off with a bunch of shorts, and half way though just starts hemorrhaging colors, music, and quality, and can’t stop. I had hopes for this movie, and I feel really betrayed after watching it.

Animation wise, this movie holds up much better than Saludos Amigos, but just barely. Like Saludos Amigos, everything feels like a standard Disney short for the time. It’s cleaned up, and there’s some definite improvement, but half way through the film it feels like half of the animation department left. Live action and animation meet about half way through the film, and the quality takes a nose dive. I understand that they have to project over the animation for this, but it just feels weird… it disconnects you from everything that the movie has set up at that point, and it doesn’t really improve from there.

Storywise, this movie really falls apart. I could excuse the lack of shorts pertaining to the Three Caballeros, and for the first bit of the movie I could dig what they set in front of me. We’re looking at shorts about birds. Specifically Donald Ducks avian family. We open with Pablo Penguin, a standard story about a penguin who wants to be somewhere warm. It plays out as a “The grass is always greener tale” and it’s pretty standard. The second act provides us with what seems like a documentary on birds. I was following this so far when the movie took a hard right and threw us into a story about a flying donkey, and a kid. I could even stay on board with this to an extent. I wasn’t happy about the transition, and I wasn’t thrilled that we’d stopped with the birds, but I could still dig it.

After this though, the movie just starts spiraling out of control. We’re left with something that doesn’t know what it wants to be. It just starts coming together as a giant mishmash of randomly assorted clips, all held together by the appearance of some stupid bird with an annoying song and screech. For instance, the “Sound Track” from Fantasia makes a brief come back, live action dancing is primarily used for the last part of the movie, throwing off the whole aesthetics of the animation. Not only that, but we don’t even see Panchito Pistoles until the very end of the movie. If he’s supposed to be a part of the Three Caballeros then why does he feel like some scrapped character that Disney just scooped out of the bottom of the bin and provided a few lines of dialogue before sending him back to the trash?

I really want to know what happened with this movie… because it seems like it could’ve been really good. I would’ve even been alright with this being a second Saludos Amigos. However it falls short in every way shape and form. Parts of it feel like it could be in Fantasia, other parts are just standard affair, and I could’ve excused the live action if it had been presented more like Saludos Amigos. I blame Saludos Amigos for not knowing what it was trying to be, but it at least had better structure than this flaming sack of third rate characters. The Three Caballeros feels like it could've been alright if they’d stuck with one theme, but direction is everywhere. It’s not only that, but the animation, music, and relationships between the characters feels overly recycled.

My end thoughts for The Three Caballeros is that nothing in this movie fits together. Everything is so out of synch, and it just comes off feeling more flashy and cheap than everything else. We’re still missing techniques, and artistry that made films up to this point so beautiful and enjoyable to watch. I miss the days of Bambi, Snow White, and Pinocchio, and we’ve just barely scraped the surface of the war time films. With both this and Saludos Amigos being such let downs I’m actually afraid to see what other atrocities come out of the Disney Studios from this time out. Next week, we’ll be covering Make Mine Music, and I hope that it turns out better than the last two films we’ve watched.

-AJ