Original release date: February 3, 1945 in the United States. It premiered in Mexico City on December 21, 1944.

Rating: G. “Contains tobacco depictions. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.”

Length: 1 hour, 11 minutes

Background: In my last review, I watched “Saludos Amigos,” Disney’s sixth feature-length animated film and a love letter to Latin America. That love continued with “The Three Caballeros,” Disney’s seventh feature-length animated film.

In “Saludos Amigos,” our pal Donald met Jose Carioca for the first time. Jose would return for this film, as you’ll see later, and bring a third bird (Panchito) to form the famed “Three Caballeros.”

This was the first feature-length animated film to also incorporate live-action actors, as some of the time’s hottest Latin American stars appear throughout the film’s segments.

The film received two nominations in sound categories of the Academy Awards but didn’t bring either home. Reviews of the film with mixed, with some saying it was more “razzle dazzle” and technological tricks than usual Disney quality.

The Caballeros as a group have had a surprising staying power in the Disney multiverse. Donald meets in his Caballero outfit at some Disney parks, and Jose and Panchito join him for special occasions.

The three also took over the “Gran Fiesta Tour” ride at Epcot in 2007 and appear in Disneyland’s version of “it’s a small world.”

Most notably, the tree had an animated resurgence with 2018’s “Legend of the Three Caballeros.” It was originally just on a DisneyLife app, but has since spread to Disney+. Its creators have posted about how views on Disney+ could help get the series to continue, so I highly recommend you check it out.

Review:

As the opening credits roll, we get the “Three Caballeros” song, which is one of the best Disney songs. It gets stuck in my head randomly on a regular basis.

The feature begins officially with a giant package, a birthday present for Donald on his birthday (Friday the 13th) from his friends in Latin America. He opens it to find lots of smaller presents.

The wild use of color is immediately noticed as Donald is against a hot pink and orange background, which along with his blue outfit give us a burst of color.

The first one he opens is a film projector and film, which segues us right into a segment called “Aves Ravas,” narrated by Sterling Holloway, the voice of Winnie the Pooh. We’re looking at some birds that might be Donald’s cousins, in this case some penguins in Antartica.

We meet Pablo the penguin, a penguin that just can’t get warm enough. He even has dreams of going to warmer places, so he straps his heater to his back and begins his journey. He has several missteps that freeze him up, so he comes up with a plan to sail with his igloo north. He finally finds land, sailing past the Chili coast and towards the Galapagos Islands.

Unfortunately for Pablo, the sun feels much warmer up this way, melting his ice ship and igloo. He finally finds land and warmth, which he loves… but with a twist of missing the cold.

Our next bird stop on our video tour is an educational look at the birds of the area, including the Aracuan bird, an annoying bird I’d love to never see again.

Following the educational bird lesson, we segue to “The Flying Gauchito,” a short from the new narrator’s viewpoint of being a young boy getting ready to go hunting. The narrator meets a flying donkey named Burrito. Mmmm… burrito.

Our little gauchito child struggles to ride Burrito, finally leashing him and training him for the fiesta.

Yes, we head to the fiesta and join the big race. The duo quickly fall behind to the real racers and pull up the rear, but then little gauchito loosens up the wings of Burriro, flying at a breakneck speed before flying past the rest of the racers and winning the big prize.

Next Donald opens a pop-up book, one that happens to have our bud Jose Carioca and his cigar inside. The annoying bird from earlier reappears, but is chased off as Jose introduces Donald to Bahia (spelled Baia in the film), a Brazilian state.

With that, we head into the animated version of Bahia, which is apparently very purple and pink going by the color scheme used as Jose sings.

Donald and Jose take a trip through the book to Bahia, complete with Jose’s numerous costume changes during his song about Bahia.

This is when we jump into live-action, with the real life Aurora Miranda – a popular singer – appearing alongside the animated Donald and Jose. It’s not quite as seamless as we’d get used to with Roger Rabbit and such, as you can see Donald and Jose go super-grainy as Aurora and friends dance in front of them. In 2020 it doesn’t work that well, but I’m sure it was huge in 1944.

Animation issues aside, Donald is very jealous of a mustached fellow singing to Aurora and grabbing her eye. Besides having Daisy already, Donald should really chill about his love for this human woman he met five minutes earlier. However, this section does end with him scoring a kiss, which transforms our dance scene into a multi-colored trippy scene.

We’re back to the presents now as Donald a big one labelled Mexico, which explodes into color and the “Three Caballeros” song. Is this where we meet our third Caballero?

Yes! Panchito arrives, and we get the singalong version of the Caballeros song. I’m never going to get this out of my head now. Panchito is a red Mexican bird who keeps some quick-draw guns on his hips for quick moments of exclamation.

Panchito introduces Donald to a piñata, which leads to questions about what the heck is a piñata. Panchito goes into the Biblical Christmas story but with children recreating it. Instead of having a baby Jesus though, they find a piñata. Donald gets blindfolded and takes several bad swings before finally busting it open, revealing a weird menagerie of children, books, instruments, and confetti.

This leads Panchito into a history lesson on Mexico. This includes Mexico City being built on water. The trio hop on a flying carpet and fly into the live-action world, taking in the sights of Mexico City. They learn several dances along the way and we learn Donald has a problem… a lady problem.

Yes, Donald falls quickly for another human woman, dancing with her and calling her “toots” (what a romantic duck). Panchito has him on the flying carpet again, in which they immediately find a beach with bikini woman for him to fall for. Poor Daisy.

The animation/live-action work better together here as Donald has found an entire circle of women to flirt with. The women toss him around via blanket in some masterful animated/live-action trickery before he again ends up flying through the air.

As the three travel by flying carpet, Donald falls – again – for a human woman, seeing singer Dora Luz in the sky. He’s in deep for Dora, doing dances on stars as she explores singing more. Unfortunately for Donald, he keeps envisioning the other birds and all kinds of colors mid-song.

Finally our duck meets Dora in person, as they dance together along with some dancing cacti, something that would make Janet from “The Good Place” very happy.

This is how we find our end, as the gang meet a Disney World-level of fireworks and one final run-through of the Caballeros song to send us out.

Extras:

There is a minute or so clip from the movie.

Should you watch it?

Watch it. Besides being educational about Mexico and our friends south of the border, all three Caballeros are great characters.