A group of Disney animators travel to South America. They create artwork inspired by their surroundings. In addition to clips of their trip, they create 4 sequences
- Lake Titicaca. Donald Duck is a tourist at Lake Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia, experiencing the local culture and interacting (and arguing) with the Narrator (Shields)
- Pedro. A little mail plane in Santiago, Chile named Pedro makes his first solo mission to retrieve the mail in a dangerous mission.
- El Gaucho Goofy. Goof takes a break from life as a Texas cowboy, to travel to Argentina and become a gaucho.
- Aquarela do Brasil. Watercolor images set to the song "Aquarela do Brasil"by Ary Barroso. Donald Duck meets Jose Carioca in Brazil and learns to samba.
The story behind this trip, and it's follow-up film The Three Caballeros, is told in the documentary Walt and El Grupo.
The Good:
The animators quick drawings, during the clips from their trip, are incredible. They clearly enjoyed the trip and were inspired by their surroundings.
The film segment with the animated watercolor artwork is beautiful and the song, "Aquarela do Brasil", is a fitting accompaniment.
The Bad:
The Pedro segment is cute, but doesn't fit with the tone of the rest of the film. It has been released as a standalone short, which is probably a better fit.
Other Comments:
-This is the 6th animated feature film for Walt Disney studios.
-This was Disney's first package film, where several short films are grouped together to make a feature length film.
-The character of José Carioca was created for this film and appeared in 2 more Disney animated films, while also appearing in Disney comics (and more recently, in the Legends of the Three Caballeros TV show and DuckTales 2017 reboot). He is also popular in Brazil.
-The animators had so many ideas for this film that they carried into the next Disney animated film, The Three Caballeros, which also featured Donald and José.
-Nominated for 3 Academy Awards: Best Scoring of a Musical Picture, Best Original Song (for the title song "Saludos Amigos" by Charles Wolcott and Ned Washington), and Best Sound Recording.
-I appreciate aspects of this film, but it is not my favorite. It's not bad, but feels more like a travel diary than a coherent story. The animation is well done and interesting.
Saludos Amigos (1943) 43 minutes
Director: Bill Roberts, Jack Kinney, Ham Luske
Starring: Fred Shields as Narrator
Clarence Nash as Donald Duck
José do Patrocínio Oliveira as José Carioca
Pinto Colvig as Goofy