I Watch Every Disney Movie In Order So You Don’t Have To: The Three Caballeros
The Three Caballeros is another Disney anthology film Disney released in 1945. This movie features Jose Cariocca (Saludos Amigos), a new character named Panchito Pistoles and, of course, Donald Duck. This movie was made in honor of Donald Duck as it was his 10th anniversary. As much as I love Disney and their shorts, I cannot WAIT until we are through with watching anthology films. No offense to all of the shorts, they are entertaining don’t get me wrong, but I just want to watch a movie that has one singular plot. But while we are only about one or four films away from being fully one plot, here is what The Three Caballeros is all about.
To start off, it’s Donald’s birthday. yaay ten years old! Anyway, he opens up a bunch of birthday presents that are just for him. The first gift is a little “documentary” about birds and their differences. We are then transported to Antartica where we are greeted by Pablo the penguin. This penguin is not like any other penguin though, he is a penguin who longs to go to the warm weather of Equatorial South America, a.k.a. the Galapagos Islands. This short basically follows Pablo trying to figure how to get to Brazil. He later comes up with the plan to cut around the ice he lives on and sail there. This works until he hits the Islands where the sun starts beating down on him and his home. His home melts and he relaxes on an island sweating his brains out and has dreams of returning back to his cold home.
The next short is another documentary about all of the odd birds there are in the world. As we are learning about all of these different birds we then meet the narrator and he begins telling us a story about his childhood, why do we need to know about his childhood? Who knows. We’re going to name the narrator Fred. So, Juan is out hunting one day and he discovers this flying donkey named Burrito, yup you read that right, and decides to train Burrito for a horse race. Of course, they win because they cheated, as in, Burrito used his wings towards the end of the race in order to win, and won 1,000 pesos. Unfortunately for Fred, everyone found out that Burrito and him cheated and so they flew away where no one has seen or heard from them again. I mean I guess we did hear from them since he’s narrating the story.
The next gift is from Jose who gives Donald a book that tells the story of Bahia, Brazil. This is a magic book because Donald and Jose are able to go inside the book and dance with all of the live action Brazilians. They are all singing and dancing about how amazing Bahia is. Of course, Donald is trying to get with one of the girls and ultimately fails, which isn’t fair because it is his birthday, like cut the duck some slack here. Once Donald and Jose return from “Brazil” Donald opens his next present where he meets Panchito a parrot who is from Mexico. Once they all meet, they take on the name “The Three Caballeros” oh my gosh that’s the name of the movie!
Panchito gives Donald a piñata and explains its history. Believe it or not, the history of the piñata actually started with the birth of Jesus Christ. Children would re-enact the the journey of Mary and Joseph trying to find a place to stay in order for Mary to give birth. The children would walk up to people’s houses and ask for shelter and each neighbor would say “no shelter”. Finally, the last house they would ask and they would allow the children in. This would then lead to the festivities and celebration of His birth.
When Donald breaks open his piñata a bunch of things that represent Latin America come out. As he is admiring all of the things he got, Donald starts to fall in love with Dora Luz who is singing a song called “You Belong to My Heart”. He. is. lovesick. He is imaging all sorts of things. At one point he’s dancing with a cactus, he’s multiplying, he’s imagining kissing Dora. This guy is drunk in love and I didn’t even know what was going on. Jose and Panchito come to the rescue and try to sober him up and Donald ends up getting blown up with a bunch of fireworks that say “The End”.
This movie had it’s cute moments and it also had it’s bad moments. I didn’t know what to expect from this film, so there were times where I became a little bored and went on my phone. I know, I’m awful. If you like birds and want to know more about the history of Latin America, then this is the movie for you. But if you are someone like me who would prefer to watch an actual movie with a plot rather than seven different segments, then you can definitely skip this movie. The lesson I learned from this film: birds fall in love harder than people.
