Anssi Vartiainen After Saludos Amigos, another short film collection was commissioned, because Disney had forgotten to say anything about Mexico. That's pretty much the reason for this film's existence, but it rises above that.For one, the segments are all much stronger than in Saludos Amigos. It's still mainly just an ad campaign for South America, but I like that they have a framing story where Donald is celebrating his birthday and gets a present from his South American friends. José is also back, and we get another new great character, Panchito Pistoles, a Mexican rooster. And yes, the name is kind of awful, but the character itself is a lot of fun.The first two segments, The Cold-Blooded Penguin and The Flying Gauchito, are both very good. The comedy is mostly silent and/or physical, the characters are sympathetic and the animation is very nice. There's also a piece about Aracuan Bird, one of the worst earworms in existence. You have been warned.The few following segments, Baía, Mexico: Pátzcuaro, Veracruz and Acapulco and You Belong To My Heart are merely more gallivanting around like in Saludos Amigos. They're fun to watch in their own way, the music is very nice, but they drag on for a bit too long and nothing much happens in them.Though at least we get the piñata scene and Las Posadas, which are some of my favourite short segments Disney has ever done. Great mood, great atmosphere, flawless animation and all around enjoyment.And then we have Donald's Surreal Reverie, which is probably the reason you should see this film. Think Pink Elephants on Parade, but much, much longer and ever crazier. I swear the animators were under some sort of influence, they had to be. It's a mind trip unlike anything Disney has ever produced. And yeah, it's a truckload of fun to watch, not gonna lie.The Three Caballeros is still not what I would call a good film. It is better than Saludos Amigos, if only because it's so weird that you cannot help but be intrigued by it. Definitely worth a watch, though, especially if you want to say you've seen them all.

OllieSuave-007 This is Walt Disney's seven full-length animated feature film, starring Donald Duck celebrating his birthday with his two Latin American friends, José Carioca, the cigar-smoking parrot, and Panchito Pistoles, the pistol-packing rooster. The film is storied in segments, each one starting when Donald unwraps each of his presents. The segmented stories include Donald's trips to Brazil and Mexico, filmed in a combination of animation and live action.It is fun seeing Donald in a full-length animated movie; his feisty characteristics and bad luck-prone personality always generate a lot of humor and non-stop laughs. His adventures throughout Latin America was potentially a treat to watch and the featured music (courtesy of singers Aurora Miranda, Dora Luz and Carmen Molina) was somewhat catchy and enjoyable. However, I thought the overall movie was a little on the dull side and not very magically captivating like you would expect in many of Disney's feature films.While Fantasia was also filmed in segments (like this movie) and consists of music and animation only and no dialog, that movie will make you at least appreciate classical music and beautiful animation and, while no dialog, each segment is filmed in a way that represents charm and personality where you could actually follow its purpose. This film really has no plot, just a mash of animation and live action in a huge dance fest and party in Latin America. It's like a never-ending parade with nothing too intriguing to grab your attention. In addition, some of the animation looked washed-out against the live action.Overall, it's nice to see Donald Duck in a motion picture, but is not one of the better Disney films.Grade D+

Foux_du_Fafa "The Three Caballeros" is one of the most unusual of oddities in the Disney animated canon. It's arguably the package feature which requires to be seen altogether the most (that is not to say that these such films deserve to go cut up and remain only viewed as separate short subjects and featurettes; it's just that they could and have easily been viewed as separate things). Regardless, it still doesn't have much of a plot. Donald Duck receives a whole load of birthday presents from his friends in Latin America, the first of which he opens being a film reel exhibiting short subjects concerning Latin American themes and stories. However, the film soon deviates as Donald's eccentric friends Jose Carioca (a parrot from Brazil) and Panchito (a rooster from Mexico) arrive and via the use of some magic gifts transport Donald to their respective countries, where live-action actors and animated settings and beings interact. In my opinion, the second and third acts of the film (the first act being the assorted short films) cannot really be viewed out of context, so in some ways, the film walks the line between single story feature (such as "Snow White", "Pinocchio", "Dumbo" etc) and package feature.For those who don't know much about the context in which the film was made (I suspect that most people who are visiting this page, however, are animation buffs who will know a bit about this film), "The Three Caballeros" was, like the earlier "Saludos Amigos" (a similarly unusual entry in Disney's library of animated features), a by-product of the American government pressuring Disney to create films based around Latin American themes in order for the USA to woo neutral South America during the Second World War away from anything Axis, and respectively also make Yankees appreciate all things South of the Border. There are hints to the propaganda purposes (such as the general "OMG, aren't Mexico and Brazil so cool?" tone as well as the birds of South America being dubbed "Donald's cousins"), but overall, the film doesn't seem too dated, or as much as everyone says it has."The Three Caballeros" is actually rather surreal. I honestly believe that such a far-out film would never get made today by such a prominent studio. It's the trippiest of Disney's animated classics easily. "Alice in Wonderland", as everybody jokes, is a bit of an LSD-fest in places, but its storybook roots keep it from seeming like the result of drinking something from a bottle marked "DRINK ME". And the high-brow spirit of "Fantasia" and its Rackham-esquire look has always prevented me from labelling it as truly trippy. Much of "The Three Caballeros", however, is so crazy that I wondered if I'd taken something by accident. The main background throughout the film is vague, changing colour to suit the mood of the scene, and the animation has no limits most of the time (for example, inanimate objects and things come to life like random, the laws of physics are disobeyed very much so and characters morph and multiply at the drop of a hat). There's even some early experiments with mixing animation and live action thrown in. Some of it is kinda lame - Aurora Miranda, playing a Brazilian cake seller, looks like she's simply walking in front of a screen where footage of Donald Duck is playing - however, some effects are quite good, such as animated cockerels morphing into live men.Overall, "The Three Caballeros" is a good film. Admittedly, the first act doesn't match the second and third act very well (it actually seems like left-overs from the tamer sister-film "Saludos Amigos", and some of the surrealism gets a bit too baffling to watch (the final ten minutes or so is an example of this sort). And not knowing any Portuguese, Jose Carioca can be difficult to understand, as he often spurts out the odd word or phrase in his native language. Yet the film is most certainly still worth watching, and makes for quite an underrated piece. Also recommended is "Blame it on the Samba" from 1948's "Melody Time". Whilst generally quite a dull package film, that segment is excellent. I believe that it was planned for "The Three Caballeros", though didn't surface until a few years later.

Seth Nelson As we continue on this Latin American Disney adventure, the 1944 animated film "The Three Caballeros" should be mentioned, at least. Here, we have Donald Duck taking center stage in this movie, along with two other bird characters: Jose, and Panchito. In this movie, we see four short segments that take us from Antarctica all the way up to close to here (Mexico). What makes this movie so impressive? The Spanish (and maybe the Portuguese), of course! What great way to say "Disney = It's Educational!" than to watch a movie immersed in the culture, history, and of course, the languages, of Latin America!Now, I say, this is very impressive Disney. What I just mentioned, plus the magic that our man, Walt Disney, has provided here makes "The Three Caballeros" one of the animated greats. Again, iDiez estrellas!