We watched The Three Caballeros today.
A few weeks ago, we went to Disneyland to see the new Star Tours.
So did everyone else. The expected wait time was two hours. Also, it was an hour until the park closed, so we went to see Small World. They had redesigned it, adding various Disney characters to the countries exhibits: Pinocchio in Italy, Cinderella in France, Lilo and Stitch in Hawaii, and so on. They put the Three Cabelleros in South America. That meant a lot to me.
Y'see, I'm a huge fan of the duck. I've been reading the comics - especially Carl Barks'. You don't see it much in America, but Donald Duck and company are HUGE overseas. Normally when I go to Disneyland, I like what they have, but I can't help but think about how none of that stuff is there. I know that it's an amusement park, not a museum but it weighs on my mind because I feel like I'm the only one thinking about it.
So I was glad to see it. I wasn't expecting it because Disney prefers to remember the bits of its history that involve princesses or were made by Pixar.
Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros were made at the request of the State Department during World War II to help create goodwill between the United States and South America. It seems to have worked fairly well. Or at least Brazil's version of Donald Duck comics was renamed to "Donald Duck and Jose Carioca". Then to "Jose Carioca and Donald Duck". Then to "Jose Carioca". (as a side-note, many countries have their own editions of Disney comics. Good information is hard to come by, but I believe that it's a combination of original stories and translated foreign stories. I do know that all the Gemstone/Gladstone Disney comics I have feature one Carl Barks story, two or three foreign stories, and one Don Rosa story).
Anyhow, it had been a while since I watched The Three Caballeros. I had seen it once when I was a kid and never had any desire to rewatch it. That's why I wanted to see it - to find out what this character had that could force Donald Duck out of the title of his own book.
Unfortunately, I didn't find out. Both movies are beautiful and brilliant in places, but they're a collection of loosely related shorts about South America. Many of them don't have much of a plot beyond "Donald chases after dancing women". Perhaps I missed it, but Jose didn't have much personality beyond "more easygoing than Donald Duck", which is a very low standard to aspire to.
There's a moment in the title song,
about forty-five seconds in, where Panchito Pistoles draws a gun on Donald. That freaked me the hell out when I was a kid and it still freaks me out now. And these guys are supposed to be his friends. I think that's one of the reasons I hadn't re-watched it ever.
I'm going to have to put the duck comics down for a week or two now. I have to whenever I watch the cartoons. Donald has a lot of dialogue and I'll never be able to get through an issue if I try to read it in that voice. In my mind, he speaks clearly and is easy to understand. But maybe in the meantime, I'll try to hunt down some of the Jose Carioca comics, if anybody's got them translated into English.