Saludos Amigos

A collection of bland, not particularly witty cartoons mixed with live-action sequences that are roughly at the level of a grade school educational film. Who thought this was a good idea? Or rather who didn’t have the guts to tell Disney it wasn’t? Well, research says this was produced largely through the impetus of official channels, to sell the American people on Latin America, and vice versa, in the wake of the outbreak of World War II. Perhaps it worked back then--after all, South America only got just so cozy with Nazi Germany. How much that was a product of this movie--it strains the language to call this an actual feature--is debatable. What is less debatable is the reality that this piece is, at this point, largely an artifact, devoid of much interest to today’s audience, and only remembered now as one part of the sequence of works that came to define the Disney studios in the early years. Watch it only if you’re a historian; otherwise, there are better uses for your viewing energies.