Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (May 17, 2022)
When one examines the history of Disney's feature animation, one can see that the studio started out strong and knocked out one classic after another - until 1943. From 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs through 1942's Bambi, each and every one of their five animated films still
maintains a strong reputation.
The same cannot be said for subsequent efforts. In fact, Disney wouldn't release an animated movie that continues to enjoy a broad public profile until 1950 when the studio came back with Cinderella.
Although it may look that way, Disney Studios didn’t remain idle during the eight-year malaise. In fact, the studio released seven mostly animated pictures from 1943 through 1949, plus two other films - Song of the South and So Dear to My Heart - that included varying amounts of animated content combined with live action narrative but essentially fell into the latter category.
However, none of these had that zip that made the prior - and subsequent - offerings so compelling. That means the memory of these films remains left to Disney-philes like myself.
For two of Disney's Forties efforts, Walt and company looked to our
neighbors to the south for inspirations, as both 1942's Saludos Amigos and 1945's Three Caballeros offer looks at various aspects of the cultures of Central and South America. Disney's reasons for doing this were less than altruistic.
For one, the releases of pretty much all the animated films after Snow White coincided with some well-known unpleasantries in Europe. The advent of World War II effectively shut down those lucrative markets and put a serious monetary pinch on the studios.
That wasn't a good thing, especially since these lavishly-animated films were rather expensive. Of course, roughly 80 years later, they all look like good investments, since they've returned their costs many times over, but at the time, all post-Snow White films did relatively poorly and Disney had to tighten their financial belts.
As such, both Amigos and Cabelleros served two purposes. First, they were much cheaper to make.
The animation went back to a more basic style that served the character-oriented shorts made by the studio. In fact, two Disney
stars - Donald Duck and Goofy- would feature prominently in these films.
Walt had famously declared that after the lavish efforts of their initial features, the studio would now only offer "meat and potatoes" animation, and these pictures were two of the first attempts at that kind of less ornate style.
Secondly, Central and South America were relatively untapped territories at the time. Walt figured he should do whatever he could to interest these folks in his product, so why not send them a couple of big old valentines?
Actually, Disney films were popular in these areas, but Walt simply wanted to push them as hard as he could, and I can't blame him. The studio really was in poor financial shape at the time.
Happily for Disney, these films ended up more profitable than most of the prior efforts. That's probably due as much to the lowered costs as anything else, but the unfortunate lesson taken from them was to continue to stick with these sorts of projects for the foreseeable future.
That's why Disney would not produce a film with a coherent plot until Cinderella in 1950. From Amigos through 1949's The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, each and every feature offered a compilation of shorts to some degree.
I suppose it's ironic that projects like Amigos and Cabelleros were more profitable than the classics that preceded them, since so few remember the "meat and potatoes" animation and so many love the more complicated creations, but I won't slam Disney for taking the path they did. Without the belt-tightening seen in these films, the studio may not have existed long enough to create all the wonderful movies that followed in the 1950s.
Without those hits, we might not still see new Disney animated pictures today. For those reasons, we have to at least be thankful that Amigos and Cabelleroes found an audience in their day.
But is there still one for these movies in our day? Yeah, I guess, though there's a good reason these films aren't viewed in the same light as their immediate predecessors and later followers. They're generally interesting and entertaining pieces of work, but the title "Disney Classics" seems too much praise for them.
Of the two, I definitely prefer Amigos. It's so short that it's hard to qualify it as a feature - 42 minutes is awfully brief, though Amigos was supplemented with other attractions during its theatrical run - but this length seems just about right for this sort of offering. Cabelleroes runs for about a half an hour longer, and it gets quite tedious.
Amigos really brings little more than a conglomeration of short cartoons linked together by some live action footage that serves as a kind of travelogue. Mainly the latter features shots of the Disney animators as they tour South America, but we also see lots of the native folks doing their native folky stuff.
These segments are mildly interesting - mostly it's fun to see the Disney people - but are nothing terribly entertaining, though the
dated nature of the material makes it more compelling. Since this project is nearly 80 years old, it's kind of fun to get a look at different cultures during that time period.
While the live action shots may be worth a look once or twice, it's the shorts that will keep you coming back to Amigos. The film contains four in all, and though some are better than others, they're all good.
Best of the bunch are the two that feature Disney stars: "Lake Titicaca" and "El Gaucho Goofy". The former shows Donald Duck as he interacts with the culture of the titular area in Peru and is very well done and funny.
It uses a standard travelogue format but integrates the Duck's usual short-temper for some solid humor. I'd say this is my favorite of the four.
Also excellent is "Gaucho", though not quite as good as Donald's piece. This short seems to be part of the "how to..." series of Goofy cartoons – though not as explicitly "demonstrative" in nature - and it's a very entertaining look at the Goof's failed attempts to be a gaucho. I'm not much of a fan of Goofy and usually find his cartoons to be decent at best, but this one works very nicely.
Of the other two shorts, the better one is the cute and charming
“Pedro”, a variation on The Little Train That Could. It features a family of postal planes, and when Daddy takes ill, little Pedro tries to fulfill his legacy and deliver the mail. It's not as funny as the Goofy and Donald features, but it's still entertaining and delightful nonetheless.
The Duck returns in the final short, "Aquarela Do Brasil", a clip notable for two reasons. First, it introduces a new personality, the
Brazilian parrot Jose (or Joe) Carioca.
Jose didn't stick around for too long. Still, he made a number of appearances in the 1940es and makes for a notable minor character.
Second, "Brasil" strongly foreshadows what we'll see in Three
Caballeros. Like most of that film, "Brasil" is much more conceptual and impressionistic.
There's no true plot but it offers an abstract visual number accompanied by the short's title song. It can be quite bizarre at times, and it has some pleasures, though I'm not terribly enamored of the format.
Nonetheless, Saludos Amigos offers some fairly charming pieces. It's rather short, but part of its effectiveness comes from the brevity.
The format doesn't last long enough to wear out its welcome. Amigos isn't a classic, but it's an entertaining program.
Footnote: while prior DVDs of Amigos offered a “censored” version of “El Gaucho Goofy”, the Blu-ray restores the original short.
