Saludos Amigos

When I first heard that Disney was going to release a number of films from the early years which had been "almost forgotten," I was very intrigued. Would there be another Sleeping Beauty or Fantasia hiding out there?

Sadly, Saludos Amigos falls very short of "Disney classic" status. It is basically forgettable.

There are a few smile-inducing moments, but overall the piece really does feel like a "keep the Sudamericanos on our side against the Nazis" period piece from the WW2 era. It's strange to watch a movie made in 1943 with live action sequences of South America looking so peaceful and unaffected by the world's events. Sure, the region was less involved in WW2 than many other regions... but, it is still strange to watch.

Anyway, I'd sum it up thusly: 1. Worth buying if you are a Disney collector and 2. Worthy of note simply to see live shots of Buenos Aires, Lago Titicaca, and Rio de Janeiro, filmed almost 60 years ago.

Other than that, you can skip this one.

Definitely dated, but still entertaing! More like a documentary than a cartoon! I liked how they show the live action, and then the animation. You can see how the artists incorporated what they were exposed to! The Brazil piece was my favorite, more for the music than anything else!

p.s. - My kids liked this, but they prefer "Three Caballeros"!

Animators on assignment from Walt Disney tour South America (along with Donald Duck!) to soak up new cartoon ideas. This long-unseen Disney item is full of color and music, but is obviously a holding-pattern release for the company. I watched the film on video, coupled with the quite-entertaining additional 20-minute documentary which regales even more of the non-animated adventures. Never too popular with the kids, probably because a major cartoon segment involving Pedro the Airplane isn't very funny and lacks the local flavor. Otherwise, some visually dazzling bits but not as good as the similar "The Three Caballeros", released in the US in 1945. **1/2 from ****

Like it's sequel, "Three Caballeros," "Saludos Amigos" was made to improve the relations between North and South America and to expose Northerners to Latin American culture. Great music and great fun, though the Latin American culture is a bit sugar-coated. A great family film though the concepts of inter-continental neighborship will go right over the kid's heads.

A fairly ordinary Disney travelogue cartoon. Ironically, the live action sequences are more interesting than the cartoons, although Goofy's turn is actually quite informative.