The Three Caballeros 1944
The package films of the 1940’s are definitely one of the low points of Disney animation, but I have been trying to catch all of the movies, and at least these are fairly short. The Three Caballeros builds on Saludos Amigos with a continuing tour of Latin America. It starts out okay and is kind of fun despite the animated sequences being mostly narrated (not a good thing). By the time they reach Mexico it really goes off the rails, starting with a bunch of still drawings in what is basically a slide show about Christmas pinatas. Also, instead of stitching together animated shorts, they try (for the first time in a feature length film) to blend live action and animation, showing you traditional dances and activities, which is pretty boring and feels like school (not even particularly interesting school). Then Donald Duck (not my favorite) goes after a bunch of live action Mexican women, including at the beach, so there is a very, very long sequence of Donald chasing women around, often in bathing suits, and some of them singing not particularly good ballads. Other than objectifying women, it isn’t that culturally insensitive, which was key since the idea was to help relations between the US and Latin America during the war. So they promote Mexican culture pretty strongly, almost like a tourism ad, making it feel kind of like marketing combined with not great animation and kind of boring singing and dancing. It is just a complete miss. I can’t imagine anyone enjoying any of this. Kids won’t like the boring stuff and even adults won’t care too much about the cultural stuff. They do a decent job of blending animation and live action, but that isn’t good enough by itself to warrant watching since Disney would do this quite a bit over the years and the live action feels really dated.
Written: 05 Mar 2021