Saludos amigos

Like it's sequel, "Three Caballeros," "Saludos Amigos" was made to improve the relations between North and South America and to expose Northerners to Latin American culture. Great music and great fun, though the Latin American culture is a bit sugar-coated. A great family film though the concepts of inter-continental neighborship will go right over the kid's heads.

Definitely dated, but still entertaing! More like a documentary than a cartoon! I liked how they show the live action, and then the animation. You can see how the artists incorporated what they were exposed to! The Brazil piece was my favorite, more for the music than anything else!

p.s. - My kids liked this, but they prefer "Three Caballeros"!

This is the fore runner of the many of the Disney TV shows of the 50's, 60's and 70's, mixing live action travel footage with cartoons that tie into the subject.It is also the first of the multi-short film that Disney would release as feature through the 1940's and early 1950's, but its one of the better ones since the pieces are all about on the same level. This, to me, is a better film than the Three Caballeros which followed it and which more people know about than this.

There are really only only four shorts, Donald a tourist, Goofy as a gaucho, Pedro the mail plane, and a piece set to the song Brazil that introduces Joe Carioca.

The real problem with this film is it just stops. Brazil ends and so does the movie. I know they say leave them wanting more but this is ridiculous.

This is a renter. The DVD box says its 75 minutes, but only if you include the short documentary, which is almost as long as the movie itself. If you and your kids like it, then buy it, but its too little to be throwing 20 bucks away on.

This more than any other film shows the plight of the Disney studio in the years following "Snow White" and "Pinocchio".

WWII had broken out, cutting off Disney's European market. In addition, striking cartoonists and their formation of a guild/union meant that the massive about of labor needed to create a "Snow White" or a "Pinocchio" now amounted to a substantially higher production cost then either of those two films (which had not been cheap to begin with).

Thus, Disney was trying to explore new ways to both package his product for another market, as well as develop new product.

They released this movie and capitalized on the then-popular South American craze. Now, however, it looks dated.

You can still it watch it though and see the genesis for several of Disney's later films: "The Three Caballeros" and the whole "How-To" Goofy series are the most obvious.

Animators on assignment from Walt Disney tour South America (along with Donald Duck!) to soak up new cartoon ideas. This long-unseen Disney item is full of color and music, but is obviously a holding-pattern release for the company. I watched the film on video, coupled with the quite-entertaining additional 20-minute documentary which regales even more of the non-animated adventures. Never too popular with the kids, probably because a major cartoon segment involving Pedro the Airplane isn't very funny and lacks the local flavor. Otherwise, some visually dazzling bits but not as good as the similar "The Three Caballeros", released in the US in 1945. **1/2 from ****