Saludos Amigos

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.

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.

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.

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 ****

This more than any other film shows the plight of the Disney studio in the years following "Snow White" and "Pinocchio".

WWII had broken out, cutting off Disney's European market. In addition, striking cartoonists and their formation of a guild/union meant that the massive about of labor needed to create a "Snow White" or a "Pinocchio" now amounted to a substantially higher production cost then either of those two films (which had not been cheap to begin with).

Thus, Disney was trying to explore new ways to both package his product for another market, as well as develop new product.

They released this movie and capitalized on the then-popular South American craze. Now, however, it looks dated.

You can still it watch it though and see the genesis for several of Disney's later films: "The Three Caballeros" and the whole "How-To" Goofy series are the most obvious.