The Three Caballeros-The Three Caballeros (1944)

Directed by: Norman Ferguson | 69 minutes | comedy, animation, family, musical | Original voice cast: Aurora Miranda, Carmen Molina, Dora Luz, Sterling Holloway, Clarence Nash, Joaquin Garay, José Oliveira, Frank Graham, Fred Shields, Nestor Amarale

‘The Three Caballeros’ is another one of Disney’s collectible films released in World War II, due to a lack of money and manpower to make a full story film. It is a compilation of a number of films inspired by Walt Disney’s South American business trips. Donald Duck receives a large package for his birthday, containing three gifts, each introducing him to a different country in Latin America. The first gift is a film projector and reels of film. Donald loves movies and plays the It turns out to be a number of videos about different (South American) birds, because Donald has “more relatives in South America than there are coffee beans in Brazil…”

The first film that impresses is a funny story about a penguin who is always cold and then makes all kinds of attempts to migrate to the northern half of the world. Very amusing is the scene in which he reaches the equator. A wonderfully childish image of the equator, because what child does not think that the equator is a really visible line?

For fans of ‘Shrek’, ‘The Three Caballeros’ is also worth a look, because it seems that the makers of ‘Shrek’ have at least seen this film and may even have taken some inspiration from it. The audience is presented with a story about a flying donkey and a little later in the film a ‘piñata’ appears, and given Donkey’s exclamation in ‘Shrek 2’ “What is a piñata anyway?”

The second gift is a large pop-up book, from which Joe Carioca, the green parrot, comes out, and who takes Donald to Baia. The train journey to Baia is beautifully animated, although surreal, but very cheerful and colorful. In Baia, Donald falls in love with a cookie seller, who is not animated, but the actress and singer Aurora Miranda. The combination of live action and animation is nicely done in this film, the characters interact well with each other and you immediately believe that Aurora is embracing Donald Duck. The music and dancing may seem a bit dated and last a bit too long, but the comic situations make up for it.

After Baia, Joe Carioca and Donald Duck meet the Mexican rooster Panchito. He takes the duo to Mexico where the three caballeros fly around on a magic carpet and Donald plunges into one adventure after another. Here too he is chasing the ladies (what would Katrien think of that anyway?) and this creates funny scenes on the beach of Acapulco.

All in all, this Disney classic is not a standard film, it is too fragmented for that, but a nice introduction to Latin American culture and of course you can enjoy the beautiful animations, which still look impressive even so many years later.