Saludos Amigos

Starring: Fred Shields (narrator), Jose Oliveira (voice), Pinto Colvig (voice) (uncredited), Clarence Nash (voice) (uncredited), Walt Disney (uncredited)
Directed by: Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, Norman Ferguson (uncredited)
Rating: Approved
Genre: Animation, Comedy
1943

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Disney animators travel to South America and make four different short stories based on their experience there.

Review:

Tim: This the sixth Disney animated film, and their first "package film", which is apparently an anthology movie. It's an exceptionally short feature. It's okay- it's a decent movie. There's some interesting things that take place, but as a whole, it feels like one of their lesser efforts. There's nothing iconic about this movie. You compare it to some of their earlier films- ones that continue to be classics to this day- and this one is clearly not at that level. It's not bad, but it's not much more than a decent movie.

I found it interesting that the movie starts with live action shots of the Disney animators traveling to South America. The whole movie takes this format- the animators went on a trip, saw amazing things, and wrote these little short stories about them. It's not the expected approach and I'm not entirely sure why it was done this way. It focuses the main story on the animators, not their animation. Sure, it's the glue that holds the film together, but it doesn't allow for much momentum to be established.

That's one of my big issues with this film, which is true of nearly all anthology films. This one tells four different stories and there's always a certain loss of momentum as one ends and another one begins. Some of them are more effective, which helps the overall film, and some of them aren't as effective, which hurts the movie. It feels like anthology films so often end up pulled to the middle, which doesn't make for a good film.

The first story here is Lake Titicaca. It features Donald Duck, which is a positive. The story itself is fine. There's some humorous gags and we learn a bit about this area of the world. It's perfectly fine, but not exactly memorable. It kicks the movie off not with a bang. The second story is Pedro, which is definitely an improvement. It's about a small plane making a mail run through dangerous terrain. While it might be a little frightening to younger viewers (my five year-old didn't love those parts), it feels like a worthwhile story. The character of Pedro is cute and he's memorable. It was entertaining and felt like an effective narrative (as opposed to Lake Titicaca, which was just a series of scenes). El Gaucho Goofy is pretty good. It talks about the Argentinian version of the American cowboy. It's again just a series of gags and plays on words, but it features Goofy and is one of the funnier stories in the film. I enjoyed it. The final one is Aquarela do Brasil, and features a new character, Jose Carioca. He's okay- he's a Brazilian parrot. He's not as iconic as Disney's other characters, but he was generally enjoyable. It was fun seeing him paired with Donald Duck, even though their story as a whole wasn't that compelling.

Saludos Amigos is a decent movie, but not among the better Disney movies. It certainly has a different flavor and approach to it, which is always worthwhile. However, it's not especially memorable. It has funny moments, but the narratives aren't very strong. I didn't love this movie, although I appreciated some aspects of it.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6.5



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