Review: Saludos Amigos (DMC #7)
Happy Friday, Disnerds! We continue our movie-watching with Saludos Amigos, the seventh film in the Disnerd Movie Challenge. In case you haven’t seen it before, here’s a quick recap. (If you have seen it, skip ahead to read our review.)
Synopsis
Saludos Amigos is the first of the “war era” Disney films, and is divided up into four segments. Each segment begins with clips of Disney artists traveling around Latin America and drawing depictions of local scenery and cultures. In the first segment, “Lake Titicaca,” Donald Duck visits the titular lake where he rides a balsa boat, learns just how windy the lake is, and meets a llama that takes him on an adventure. The second segment, “Pedro,” features a small airplane named Pedro who wishes to become a mail carrier like his father. Pedro‘s parents are unable to fly to Mendoza to retrieve the mail, so Pedro offers to do the job. During his flight he comes across the treacherous mountain Aconcagua and a terrible storm, leaving his mission on the verge of failure. While his parents fear he may be lost, Pedro returns safely home. The “important mail” turns out to be just a simple postcard, but Pedro and his parents are proud that he has accomplished his task.
“El Gaucho Goofy” shows Goofy as an American cowboy suddenly transported to Argentina to learn the ways of the native gaucho. The narrator describes the life of the gaucho, while Goofy is having a hard time keeping up, in no small part thanks to the antics of his mischievous horse. Eventually Goofy is returned to his native Texas to continue living out his days as a cowboy, a profession he enjoys far more. The last segment is called “Aquarela do Brasil” (Portuguese for “Watercolor of Brazil”). Here, an animated paintbrush creates colorful scenes of Brazil. Donald Duck emerges from a flower and watches the brush paint, eventually creating a new character named Jose Carioca. Jose takes Donald around South America, enjoying a spicy drink and dancing the samba together.
Thoughts Before Watching
Kevin: The title is familiar but otherwise I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen this either in part or in full. I thought Jose was introduced in The Three Caballeros, but I recently learned that this was his first appearance.
Megan: I don’t know that I’ve ever seen this movie before, unless clips of it were included in a Disney sing-along video. I’ll be interested to see if I recognize any of it or if this indeed a completely new film to me.
Thoughts After Watching
Kevin: After watching, I looked into the production and reception of this film and read that this helped introduce United States Americans to a side of Latin America that they weren’t familiar with. That’s a bit of history I certainly never knew before, and I believe I can see why this had that effect back in the 1940s. Then again, because this film and others like it during this era are more of a series of segments instead of over-arching stories, there are parts that are just less interesting than others. This felt more like a documentary at times and, for this reviewer, it’s more dull than anything else. It seems like it’s trying to both educate and entertain, but it doesn’t work well at either goal.
A series of vacation photos and videos does not make a great film.
Megan: You know how your friend returns from vacation and suddenly dumps hundreds of photos and videos of their trip on their social media feeds? This movie feels kind of like that to me, only there’s no option to scroll past it (well, we could fast forward, but that would be breaking the rules of the challenge). To Kevin’s point regarding how this film was received in the 1940s, I can see where this would have opened people’s minds to the greater world. At that time they didn’t have internet or social media or really all that much television to show them how the rest of the world lived. This would have been their only glimpse into South America without going in person to see it, and so if it increased South American tourism back then I think it did what it was meant to do. However, for today’s audience who has access to all that information at their fingertips, there isn’t really enough here to hold our interest. Maybe small children who are still learning about the world might find it interesting and be entertained by the animated clips, but it is a bit dull when viewing this as an adult.
Is it just me, or is this film a bit…”othering”?
Megan: As a white woman I may not quite have the authority to decide this one way or another, but to me moments within the film felt like they were positioning the South American people as “other” in the way they presented their culture. It made me uncomfortable that the film was a portrayal of South American cultures through the lens of a North American tourist, not the South American people telling their own story. I think I would have preferred to hear from the people of South America as if they were inviting us to their home country.
Artists will find something to love.
Kevin: As with some of the other movies we’ve watched so far, it’s the animation technicalities that captured my attention the most. For example, during one of the live-action traveling shots, the narrator described how the Disney artists needed to work quickly in order to capture good sketches of landscapes or people. Additionally, these artists were usually not able to take photos and thus had to rely on their hopefully accurate sketches in order to animate once they returned to the studio. Lastly, I loved the paintbrush as it painted the scenes of Brazil. It’s fun to watch literal art create literal art.
Feminists will be disappointed.
Megan: Given that this is from the 1940s it now comes as no surprise to me that this film does not pass the Bechdel test. The film fails on all counts because the women we see never speak and we never see two women on screen together unless it is in a live-action crowd scene. The only animated females we see are the mama plane, a few random villagers, and dancing silhouettes. We do see at least one woman among the Disney artists during the live action sequences, but it’s hard to know if she, too, is an artist or if she is merely there as a secretary or assistant to the team.
We have mixed thoughts on the cartoons.
Kevin: There are a few “story” moments that were mildly interesting. Classic Goofy cartoons almost always get a chuckle out of me, and “El Gaucho Goofy” was no exception — after all, he’s probably my favorite of the classic Disney cartoon characters. “Pedro” is a simple but cute story, and it’s very easy to get on Pedro’s side as he bravely flies to retrieve his mail (I actually rooted for his flight more than I did Dumbo’s). Donald’s cartoons were definitely my least favorite.
Megan: I have to disagree slightly with Kevin here, because I’ve found that as an adult the classic Mickey and Friends cartoons don’t really do it for me anymore. I think the humor of them is just a bit too slapstick for me now, even though I enjoyed them as a kid. That’s probably why I was unimpressed with the Goofy and Donald cartoons here. Like Kevin, though, I found “Pedro” to be the most interesting part of the entire film. It’s also the one part of the film that felt vaguely familiar, like maybe I had seen it before, though I’m not quite sure where. I think I enjoyed this segment so much because the rest of the film is seriously lacking in any character development or plot. The entire film is predominantly setting, which is a strange thing to encounter. At least with “Pedro” we get a sense of character and story—our minds are wired for story, and so it is easier to recall the order of Pedro’s adventures than it is to recall the order in which the various disconnected film segments appeared.
Films made on the cheap feel…cheap.
Kevin: I’ve seen a few of the wartime films in the Disney canon, and I know that at that time the studio couldn’t afford to produce the full-length animated films they previously put out. Unfortunately, I think it brings this film down and I’m slightly anxious if the rest of them from this era will feel the same.
Verdict
Kevin: 2 (would be lower without “Pedro” and some of the other animated sequences)
Megan: 1 (not even “Pedro” redeems it for me)
Final Score: 1.5