I've fallen behind in reviews and jumped ahead in the film repertoire, so I'm reaching back to a few months ago to review these films.
Disney's run of spectacular films was sadly ended by the U.S.'s entry into WWII, causing most of the animation staff to be drafted up into the war effort. Those ineligible stayed, and so what follows in the Disney stable are several films cobbled together from ideas that were forming in the past. Essentially they are anthology films, not unlike Fantasia (1940) though none reach the genius level of that film.
The first two can be paired together, Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944). Both films take a particular interest in South American culture, with Amigos jumping around to various locations and animating stories based on the environment. The shorts are framed around home movie footage of Disney animators flying and visiting their various destinations, which makes it almost a pseudo-documentary. It's also the shortest Disney feature to date, at 42 minutes, and some will probably complain about its official status, but there you go.
The shorts themselves range from decent to bleh, with the highlight being a cute little airplane named Pedro who makes a treacherous mail delivery past a demon mountain of some sort. Goofy shows up as a Gaucho, educating children on the Latino version of the cowboy; Donald Duck has adventures in Lake Titicaca; and the animators invent a new character, Jose Carioca, that green parrot who teaches Donald about the night life of Rio de Janeiro. He's not the most charismatic character, in spite of the animator's best efforts, and there is a reason he is unknown outside of die-hard Disney fan circles.
Caballeros is a longer iteration of Amigos, and is more of the same. It runs at 71 minutes, but even that runtime sags and begins to stretch the limitations of one's patience. Donald receives three gifts from friends down south which proceed to educate him on Central and South America. The best short involves a penguin fed up by the Arctic, and his attempts to make it north to more tropical and friendly environments. It's narrated by Sterling Holloway, and if you don't recognize that name, just wait. He's going to be popping up a lot more in the reviews to come. Jose Carioca returns for more Samba, and there is a long, strange live action-animation blend where Donald and Carioca interact with a samba dancer and her crew. The film is really a mess, meanders on too long, and leaves very little impact. It has its moments, and Donald is always fun to see, but there comes a point in the viewing where you get bored and want it to end already.
And now we enter the run of "package" films. These films are full of ideas that the studio was working on, and were either too long to be considered shorts but too short to be considered features. Make Mine Music (1946) is a collective of several Disney shorts, though the one most will remember is Peter & the Wolf. It uses the famous score written by Sergei Prokofiev, which features different instruments representing the different players in the scenario. Sterling Holloway once again narrates, but I find his voice over distracting and unnecessary. The Disney animators convey the story so perfectly through the emotions and expressions of the characters, and I feel like Disney didn't trust the children to understand what was going on without everything being spelled out.
The best short is the Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met, featuring the operatic Nelson Eddy who supplies every voice and vocal range of the short. The Whale at the Met is always a notoriously depressing short, as Willy the Whale attracts attention from all over, his only dream to sing at the Metropolitan in New York. Someone reasons that the whale must have swallowed an opera singer, and sets out to kill the whale. It's all hilariously tragic, and one of Disney's better shorts.
Make Mine Music is also notorious for the omitted short Martins vs. the Coys, which is too bad because its also pretty good. Removed because of "comic gunplay," this short (which you can find on YouTube) features two rival families who start shooting at each other, until only one guy and one girl from opposing sides is left. They naturally fall in love, while their ancestors watch from heaven. Its curious that Disney has decided this short to be inappropriate, yet are forced to stick with their more insensitive portrayals of ethnicities throughout their filmography. When you watch it, is it really that different from Elmer Fudd hunting Bugs Bunny?
Fun & Fancy Free (1947) features two shorts and a very odd live-action middle portion. The first is Bongo, about a circus bear who escapes to the wild and finds true love, though he fails to understand that bears smack each other to show they love each other (one of Disney's more hilarious songs). Many will remember the second short, Mickey and the Beanstalk, of course a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk. But randomly, in the middle, Jiminy Cricket shows up and goes over to some ventriloquist's house, where a little girl is being entertained by the various cheeky puppets. Its such an off-beat and almost creepy section that ruins the charm of the two shorts. Basically, Bongo and Beanstalk are best viewed on their own.
And finally there is Melody Time (1948), again a big compilation of shorts, and the best one. Featured are Johnny Appleseed, which really needs no explanation. He's just such a determined little fella' with his pot hat and appleseeds. The other is Pecos Bill, sung by Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneer, a story about a boy raised by wolves in the old west, and who grows up to become the manliest man there is. His horse gets jealous when he falls for a girl, however, and zany situations ensue. Other shorts fill in the gaps, including Little Toot, about a tugboat that fucks everyone's shit up, and the return of Jose Carioca for one more attempt at being popular. His Samba once again does not impress.
Of course, the majority of the films here were released Post-War, as Disney and his team were preparing to release their first full narrative story in 8 years, Cinderella (1950). For anyone interested in what the Silly Symphonies were like, the majority of these shorts give you a pretty solid foundation. Sure none of them leave a lasting impact, and upon reflection these are the films that will probably fall at the bottom of most lists just based on unrecognizability. But there is still a charm to these tales, and in one way or another, you probably know most of them already.
