Saludos Amigos and
The Three Caballeros are two rather
unusual entries into the Disney animated canon that are perhaps quite often
forgotten today; their origin, however, is an interesting story. On the cusp of
the United States’ entry into World War II, Disney were asked by the US
Government to go on a goodwill tour around Latin America, in order to strengthen
the bond between the two, as several South American countries had ties to Nazi Germany
and the US wanted to keep things friendly between them. The result is the aforementioned films,
two anthology or “package” films, which combine a number of different shorts,
each based on different aspects of Latin American culture. The result is an, at
times interesting, but often confused and somewhat tedious affair; as these are
not traditional movies, with little narrative, characterisation or direction,
it is hard to talk about them in detail, but I’ll try as best as I can to share
how I feel.
The animation in both films is serviceable, if nothing
special. As said before, the films are made up of a number of different shorts,
unsurprisingly, then, the animation style here is more reminiscent of Disney’s
previous short cartoons, as opposed to their full-length features. The
animation is still good, but it is certainly not on the level of quality of any
of the previous Disney movies, like I said, it’s just in the style of their
normal cartoons, nothing different or extravagant. One point of interest
however, is that several sections of The
Three Caballeros combine hand drawn animation with live action footage, in
one of the earlier experiments with this technique, as far as I know. While
this technique has hardly been perfected, yet – it’s still a long way off til Who Framed Roger Rabbit – it still looks
good and is quite impressive for the time. While you don’t always think that
Donald or the other animated characters are really in these live action
locations and you rarely feel that the live action actors are in the animated
backgrounds (they hardly blend in at all) there are times when the interaction
between the two is quite impressive, such as when Donald is thrown up and down
on the beach or is dancing with a woman. Again, there are a lot of flaws in the
use of this technique, but it’s charming to see it in its infancy and must have
been quite novel at the time.
Well, you know what they say about big bills
Each film has somewhat of a framing device that ties the
shorts together, though in neither case is it particularly strong and in Saludos Amigos it is kind of hard to
call it a framing device at all, as it is simply just a narrator explaining how
the Disney animators came up with the different shorts and then introducing
them; still, this is no worse than Deems Taylor’s introductions in Fantasia. The live action footage and
narration is actually very interesting, it is fascinating to see the Disney
artists and animators in their environment, to see how they drew inspiration
from their surroundings, how they formed that into a solid idea for a short and
the various different levels of concept art. Funnily enough, their concept art
and breathtaking sketches and paintings of the South American landscape are a
lot nicer to look at than the animation of the actual shorts. Still, though
entertaining, these live action segments feel a little out of place; the way
they are presented and narrated makes them feel less like they are part of a
feature film and more like news reels, or behind the scenes footage you might find in
the DVD extras. Perhaps if the film had taken a different approach as more of a
documentary about Disney’s travels around South America, as well as an
examination of how they got their inspiration and interpreted the world around
them, it would have been a lot more interesting, but as part of a collection of
animated shorts, it doesn’t quite work and makes the two parts of the movie –
the framing device and the actual shorts themselves – feel very separate and
disjointed. The framing device of The Three
Caballeros is a lot more traditional – Donald Duck receives a number of
gifts, each of which tell a different story about Latin America; though this
fits the format of the movie a lot better, it is hardly a strong narrative and
doesn’t really glue the shorts together much better than its predecessor.
The Three Caballeros (And Greg)
The shorts on their own are perfectly fine, but nothing
special; as I said before, they are just standard Disney cartoons, nice but
nothing more. The exception to this in Saludos
Amigos is the final segment, “Aquarela do Brasil”, which shows a paintbrush
forming a watercolour painting of Brazil that slowly comes to life; this looks
like something out of Fantasia and is
animated appropriately – it is bright and colourful, plays with your
expectations in terms of shapes and perspective and perfectly matches sound and
movement. The segment featuring the titular song from The Three Caballeros is also pretty good, the song itself is
nothing special, but the speed and energy of the animation that accompanies it
is pretty impressive; it is very energetic and has a lot of ideas and images
flying around, but never gets out of the animators’ control. There are some
other visually impressive shorts that combine sound and animation, like in the
end of Saludos Amigos, but they tend
to go on a little too long and get too strange; though the energy of these segments
is initially admirable, they ultimately get a little too hyperactive and there
is just too much of it, you start to feel exhausted and want things to slow down a
little, but the film never does and then it just ends suddenly. This is perhaps
best defined by the fact that one short partway through and then most of the
end of the film seems to consist solely of Donald Duck chasing hot live action
women; while this is a pretty funny concept, it’s also a little strange and
gets kind of exhausting by the end. Like, I get it Donald they’re hot, but take
it easy man, Daisy’s gonna be pissed; I dunno, it just seemed like a really odd
choice to centre a great deal of your movie around. Speaking of Donald, I don’t
really know that I care for how he’s used here – it’s Donald alright, I guess,
but there’s something a little unrecognisable about him in these movies. He’s a
little unlucky and gets mad a couple of times, but I dunno, I don’t think they
really give him enough time to be the Donald we know; we get little glimpses of
his personality but his scenes don’t get to breathe enough for the film to
really tap into the funniest aspects of Donald’s character. The pacing is just
too fast and hyperactive, there’s always something going on visually and it
never stops or slows down to really let Donald react or be funny, he’s only
really there to be a recognisable Disney character, really, his role could have
been filled by anyone. Overall, the shorts aren’t bad, they’re just decent and
at worst, a little boring.
‘Winston tastes good like a cigarette should gya-huh!’
I really don’t know what else to talk about, to be honest,
these are pretty strange and unconventional films in terms of their format and
are pretty short – Saludos Amgios isn’t
even feature length, clocking in at 42 minutes – and don’t have much to them,
so I don’t know what I can say. I think the idea and background behind these
films is more interesting than the actual films themselves, the history behind
Disney’s South American tour and the footage of their experiences and ideas is
very interesting. It’s also cool and also quite informative to see all these
different aspects of Latin American culture and actually a little heart warming
that Disney managed to bridge the cultural divide a little and introduce some
of the beauty and wonder of South America to the US; the South American theme
behind the shorts is, for better or worse, a lot more interesting than the
shorts themselves. Again, that’s not to say the shorts suck or anything, but I
don’t think any of them are really good enough to stand out and even all of
them can’t really hold a whole film together. I just don’t think the format
worked, we know that Disney can construct a great movie out of a number of
shorts, from Fantasia, but lightning
didn’t strike again here; I think the different segments would probably work
better on their own, as individual cartoons or shorts to be played before a
feature film, rather than collected all together with a loose framing device
around them. Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros are definitely two
of the lesser-known Disney movies and, despite some interesting ideas, I can
certainly see why – they’re nothing special.
Other Thoughts
- This is just Woody Woodpecker, come on guys
It’s totally fucking Woody Woodpecker what are we doing
5/10
Next Week: Make Mine Music!
Email: joetalksaboutstuff@gmail.com
Twitter: @JSChilds
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