Les Trois Caballeros

Donald Duck celebrates his birthday opening several presents from his Latin American friends and with his friend Jose the Parrot from Brazil, and Pachito the Rooster from Mexico is given a vibrant energized look at Brazilian and Mexican culture and music with several strange and surreal tangents.

Following the success of Saludos Amigos which had come about from the State Department's Good Neighbors Policy to improve relations between neighboring South American countries whom had diplomatic and commercial ties to Axis powers such as Nazi Germany, Walt Disney Animation studios returned to produced a spiritual follow-up with The Three Caballeros which basically serves as a sort of expansion on the Saludos Amigos. While not a direct follow up, the film did feature the return of Jose the Parrot as well as the same mixture of Live-Action and animation footage, but this time the film gets more experimental with many sequences built around the concept of Live-Action characters interacting with animated characters in one of the earliest attempts at doing so that would later be revisited with more technical polish in Song of the South. Caballeros was a solid success upon its release making more than Dumbo's run and raking in $700,000 in Mexico alone. There's a lot of energy in Three Caballeros and on a technical level it ambitiously (but roughly) mixes Live-Action and animation to good immersive effect, but with a rather anemic plot and repetitive structure the movie begins to feel its length.

The animation and art direction while not the pinnacle for a Disney feature film is still really strong probably falling just shy of the level of Dumbo in terms of technical craft. The characters and designs are lively and energized, and there's a surreal but colorful and party like atmosphere to the film that immerses you into the songs, dances, and environments. While the live action/animation hybrid style is still very much in its infancy with certain sections with the characters not as well incorporated as the filmmakers want(some scenes feel like the characters are floating in the foreground), it's still a very strong effort regardless and show's the possibilities with the medium in such a format. Some sequences such as the Acapulco sequence where Donald not only has a drop shadow, but also interacts with elements in the environment including beach blankets and bodies of water.

Story wise it's a pretty thin set up with Donald celebrating his birthday and each present leading to a different segment. The first present is a film strip which is basically a bunch of four to seven minute shorts tied to Latin American culture in some fashion. The shorts are varying degrees of okay playing like standard Silly Symphonies that just happen to be loosely strung together. The next present he opens is his Brazilian present with a pop up book that contains Jose the Parrot that serves as our framing device for the Brazil segment, and lastly Donald's present from Mexico with Pachito the Rooster which is pretty similar to the Brazil segment save for the final 15 minutes where the segment goes off the rails with surreal imagery of dancing flowers and cactuses that seems like it's trying to out do the Pink Elephants scene from Dumbo in terms of "wha?" and basically forgets any plot the movie might've had at one point instead going through a series of increasing bizarre and exaggerated imagery until the film's final crescendo.

You could watch any twenty minute stretch of Three Caballeros and feel entertained and engaged, the problem is with all these segments strung together playing at the same jubilant level for nearly the entirety of the film's running time it becomes quite exhausting to sit through and the film's constant energy became more draining than exciting as the film went on. Disney chopped pieces of this film up for broadcast on TV programs like Mouse Works or Mouse Tracks and given the structure of the film that's really the best way to experience this movie, in small manageable segments rather than taken as the gauntlet it is. In terms of its historical value and technical merit there's a lot here to appreciate from the dances, to the music, to the crude but innovative mixture of Animated characters in live-action environments, but with its thin plot and near constant levels of exuberance Three Caballeros is like a party that starts out fun, but as time wears on your looking for an excuse to leave and head home.

This was my favorite movie when I was four. Now that I'm older, I still watch it every once in awhile, even though there are movies I like better. The Three Caballeros is full of cute humor early in the movie, and the rapport between Donald Duck and Joe Carioca is wonderful. The animated short `The Cold-Blooded Penguin' is *very* cute, and the song `Baia' is one of my favorite Disney songs of all time. Then Panchito arrives, and after the wonderful `Three Caballeros' song, things start to go a little bit crazy. The plot, such as it was, completely evaporates as Donald seems to descend into a girl-crazy madness. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, however; the final part of the movie is very entertaining, even though it's odd at the same time. I gave this movie an 8 out of 10.

Funny, people nowadays don't seem to realize that this was a World War II propaganda film -- only one comment below makes that point. Many such features and shorts were turned out during this time, and not just from Disney; Warner Bros., MGM and others did as well. Keep this in mind and it makes a little more sense. Even more of the fractured, surreal nature of this film is explainable when viewed in the context of other Disney animated features of this time. "Fantasia" (of course), "Dumbo," "Pinocchio" and other movies contained what seemed like drug- or alcohol-induced sequences (maybe someone with more intimate knowledge of Disney productions of the time can shed some light on those!). Disney also seemed eager to experiment with blending of animation and live action during this time ("Song of the South"). Anyway, this was aimed primarily at engendering better relations between North Americans and our ostensible allies in Latin America. The animation is very good and some of the music (especially the title song) is memorable. Watch it for what it is and enjoy!

Walt Disney's outreach to the South American market resulted in a couple of films--SALUDOS AMIGOS was the first, and THE THREE CABALLEROS came next. To make a comparison, I'd have to see "SA" again, but I do recall that it had some charming musical sequences.

The same is true of THE THREE CABALLEROS, especially when the musical score includes the title song (delightully done by Panchito, Jose Carioca and Donald Duck), and repeated throughout, and ballads such as YOU BELONG TO MY HEART and HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO BAIA? All of them are performed with some fantastic art work and animation combining live action and cartoon characters.

The last fifteen minutes seems to be scrambling for a way to keep the viewer's attention with some explosive fireworks and a dazzling display of surrealism, minus any conception of a way to end the movie on a high note. The film itself is uneven, offering typical Disney animation for the flying donkey sequence and then resorting to over-the-top fireworks that outdo the Pink Elephants number from DUMBO.

But it's hard to resist the bouncy South American flavor of the score and the charming characterizations of Donald, Panchito and Jose Carioca. The stylized conception of a Mexican Christmas by artist Mary Blair is a standout among the art work involved here, although later the piñata sequence is a bit overwhelming in effects.

The dazzling color and the music make it worth watching at least once, although it's hard to make a comparison between this and other Disney full-length features. Some of the action is fast and furious but the sort of thing that will appeal to very young children.

Summing up: You will either love it or hate it, but if you're a Disney fan you should see it at least once.

"The Three Caballeros" is a nice little gem of golden-age Disneyana, that could have used perhaps a little more polishing.

The Disney Studios apparently produced several pieces around the time period of this animated-live action featurette; "Caballeros" is probably the best known of the series. The basic premise here is that Donald Duck is celebrating his birthday, and a large package of presents is sent to him from friends in several Latin American countries. The event turns into a celebration of Latin culture, focusing on Brazil and Mexico; Donald is given tours by two "colleagues," a cigar-chomping parrot-cum-boulevardier named Joe Carioca, and Panchito, a bandito rooster (complete with never-empty six-guns).

Perhaps twenty to thirty minutes of the piece is made up of the cartoon characters superimposed over live action, or live actors doing carefully choreographed moves in front of a screen. The techniques are apparent to the eye, and dated by modern standards, but they were reasonable attempts to fuse the two worlds together. More problematical to this correspondent is the last 10-15 minutes; while having a few interesting sequences, the lack of a plot (becoming a dream of random images in Donald's ever-confused thoughts) makes the section drag down the rest of the film. Less importantly, politically correct types may object to the "Hollywoodization" and "Disneyfication" of Latin culture/music that turns it into a progression of scenes from a folkloric or idealized mariachi show. Of course, shows like "The Three Caballeros were never meant to show the actual grit of much of Latin American life....

If you're looking for that reality, avoid this like the plague. If you're looking for fun, good Hollywood-Latin music, and "poorty girls," head out and rent it.