The Three Caballeros

That's Jose Carioca in the middle, Panchito Pistoles to the right, and some low-key, unknown individual to the left.

"We're three Caballeros, three gay Caballeros
They say we are birds of a feather!"

Released in 1944 (In Mexico, 1945 in the States), The Three Caballeros (Caballero being Spanish for knight or gentleman, according to context) is the 7th film in the Disney Animated Canon. A follow-up to Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros once again explores Latin American culture, this time covering Mexico, a country that was left out of Saludos Amigos. The film stars Donald Duck, José Carioca (from Saludos Amigos) and introduces Panchito from Mexico, who together make the eponymous Three Caballeros.

The film is an Animated Anthology, although the segments aren't as divided as they are in Saludos Amigos, and flow together with one plot line of Donald having received gifts for his birthday:

  • The film opens with Donald receiving a present from his friends in Latin America. The present contains 3 smaller presents. The first one he opens is a film projector. He sets it up, and watches it. The film Aves Raras or "Strange Birds" contains shorts about birds:
    • The Cold-Blooded Penguin is about a Penguin named Pablo (no relation) who can't stand the cold. After repeated attempts being thwarted by his inability go too far from his house, he decides to just take his house with him on an ice floe. His trip to the Galapagos Islands takes him up the coast of South America, pointing out the various landmarks along the way.
    • After this short, the film then documents actual birds of South America, introducing the Aracuan and his silly antics.
    • The Flying Gauchito follows the story of a boy from Uruguay, who catches and befriends a flying donkey, which he names Burrito (which means "little donkey"). Together, the two enter a race.
  • With this, the film in the projector ends, and music starts coming one of his presents. Donald opens the present to find a pop-up book on Brazil with his old friend José Carioca inside. José suggests that the two should go to Bahia, singing two whole songs about how great Bahia is and that they should go there (respectively) before they actually go.
  • After leaving Bahia, Donald opens his third present from Mexico, which contains the rooster Panchito. After singing the Three Caballeros theme song together, he presents Donald with a Piñata, and explains Las Posadas, the story of a group of Mexican children re-enacting the trek of Mary and Joseph for Christmas.
    • After breaking the Piñata, Panchito explains the origin of the Eagle on the Mexican flag, and the trio takes a tour of Mexico.
    • After this, Panchito explains how even the skies of Mexico City are made of love, at which point, a woman appears in the night sky and begins singing You Belong to my Heart. Entering the picture alone, he follows the woman until she eventually kisses him, which causes things to turn into a Disney Acid Sequence, where he then dances with a woman and various cacti.
  • The movie then ends on a bullfight, with Donald playing the bull, Panchito playing the matador, and Jose playing the cheering crowd (yes, all of it).

The Trio would later appear in two stories written by Don Rosa, a few episodes of The House of Mouse and a dark ride at Epcot's Mexico Pavilion. A Third Latin American film that would have introduced a fourth, Cuban Caballero was planned, but never released.

Not to be confused with ¡Three Amigos!

Tropes used in The Three Caballeros include:
  • A Boy and His X: A Boy and his Flying Donkey.
  • Accidental Kiss: When Panchito and José pick up Donald to leave Acapulco, Donald is in the middle of blindfolded bathing beauty chasing, and thus thinking that he's caught one, ends up kissing José. Three kisses and he still can't tell he's kissing a parrot until the blindfold is removed.
  • Bag of Holding: The Piñata holds a lot of stuff, including the Mexican picture book, which is actually much bigger than the Piñata was in the first place.
  • Barefoot Cartoon Animals: Panchito and (probably) Jose.
  • Berserk Button: The normally amiable, almost painfully affectionate José becomes...er...rather indignant when his cigar is stolen by the Aracuan.
  • Bilingual Bonus: English, Spanish and Portuguese!
  • Bowdlerisation: You could probably guess that in their modern appearances José no longer smokes cigars and Panchito no longer has two guns that he fires everywhere. Don Rosa's The Magnficent Seven (minus 4) Caballeros at least acknowledges that the two used to have those. The "Gay Caballeros" line remains intact, though.
  • Bull Seeing Red: While Donald isn't an actual Bull, Panchito still plays with this by using a two-sided cape, switching colours when the audience isn't looking and taunting "What's the matter with you? Are you colour blind?"
  • Chromatic Arrangement: Donald is blue, José is green, and Panchito is red.
  • Cigar Fuse-Lighting: Jose Carioca lights the fireworks on Donald Duck's bull costume with his cigar.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Panchito, José and Donald make a Chromatic Arrangement. All three of them incorporate colours from their respective countries' flags. Panchito is designed to be mostly red specifically so that he'll stand out from the other two. Both Donald and José have already used White and Green (the other colours of the Mexican flag) in their designs.
  • Continuity Nod: As Donald opens the box at the beginning of the film, a snippet of the theme song from Saludos Amigos plays. When José meets Donald, his reaction mirrors the one he has in the earlier film - To ramble on in Portuguese before summing it up in a short English phrase. "Or as you Americans say: What's cooking?" Similarly, when Donald asks Joe to "hit him with his boogie beat", Joe does so via a music-generating dance similar to the one he did in Saludos Amigos.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: Pablo's ice floe doesn't start melting until right after he crosses the equator, when it should have melted long before that.
  • Covered in Kisses: Happens twice to Donald. The first time brought on an abrupt scene change, the second time things becomes full blown Disney Acid Sequence.
  • Crowd Song: "Os Quindines De Yaya" (AKA that song in Bahia).
  • Crossdresser: All three Caballeros. During the José's second song, he briefly wears a Carmen-Miranda-style costume. After the whole Bahia sequence, while Donald is descibing what he likes about it, his appearance changes into a more feminine one when he mentions the women. All three appear in drag (with live-action ladies' legs) during a hallucination. Finally, during the bull fight in the end, Panchito briefly wears his cape like a skirt.
    • Interestingly, Carmen Miranda's sister is in the film's Brazilian sequence.
  • The Danza: José is still voiced by José Oliviera, while Professor Holloway (Narrator of The Cold-Blooded Penguin) is voiced by Sterling Holloway.
  • Determinator: "... with a tenacity of purpose seldom seen in a penguin."
  • Deranged Animation: Some parts of this film skip being bizarre and practically start off in the freakin' Twilight Zone.
    • "Submitted for your approval, a journey into the mind of a duck as he searches for his Latin American soulmate." *Beat* looks confusedly and worriedly at his cigarette "What the hell is in this thing?"
  • Did Not Do the Research: Some of the place names aren't spelled correctly in English or the native language of the place in question. "Baia" is spelled with an h in both English and Portuguese
  • Disney Acid Sequence: Things get a bit trippy at the end, to put it mildly. Arguably "Donald's Surreal Reverie" is matched in its Disney Acid Sequence-ness only by "Pink Elephants on Parade" and "Heffalumps and Woozles". It gets pretty weird in the middle too, just after Donald and José open the box from Mexico.
  • The End: The finale involves a Bullfight with Donald as the bull made out of fireworks. José sets the fireworks off with his cigar, which then spell out "Fin", "Fim" and "The End", highlighting the multiculturalism theme of the movie.
  • Everything's Better with Penguins: Yes, there is a penguin.
  • Everything Dances: Towards the end of the Bahia segment, pretty much the entire city starts bouncing like it's made of jelly. Even the moon.
  • Fan Nickname: Back in his homeland of Brazil, José is endearingly known as "Zé Carioca".
    • It's not just a Nickname, In Portuguese we generally use Zé instead of José. It's really rare to hear José as a name.
  • Furry Confusion: The look at South American birds has normal birds that are only a little anthromorphised - no more than in, say Dumbo or Sleeping Beauty... and then there's the Aracuan.
    • Let's not forget the movie is being watched by Donald Duck.
  • Gainax Ending: See Non Sequitur Scene.
  • Get On With It Already: José asks Donald if he's been to Bahia 5 times before Donald finally loses his patience as reverses the question, asking if José himself has been to Bahia. He hasn't.
  • Gratuitous Foreign Language: Joe is continually speaking Portuguese, even though he knows Donald doesn't understand and he'll have to repeat himself in English. Comparatively, Panchito really only utters a few short Spanish interjections.
  • Guns Akimbo: Panchito loves to fire off those guns of his.
  • Gun in My Pocket: Some of the comics more directly address Panchito's apparent need to fire his guns off whenever he's in a good mood.
  • Hello, Nurse!: "She makes cookies my friends! Cookies!" Cookie-making señoritas, bathing beauties, dancing cactus and flower women - this one's got it all!
  • Here We Go Again: The Cold-Blooded Penguin ends with Pablo showing a desire to make a trip back to Antarctica.

Narrator: (laughs) Never satisfied! That's human nature for you, even if you're a penguin.

  • Hyperspace Mallet: José's green hammer. He bashes Donald with it to shrink him down to size, then later lends it to Donald so he can use it to bash the orange seller over the head.
  • Hypocritical Humor: When Donald mimics José's little ritual, he proclaims "Nada aqui nesta manga" as tons of cards pour out of his sleeve.
  • Incredible Shrinking Man: José shrinks down Donald in order to enter a pop-up book of Brazil. The size really doesn't really come into play until Donald needs to grow again in order to open his next present.
  • Interactive Narrator: The Flying Gauchito. Which is interesting, because the narrator and the Gauchito are the same person.
  • Keet: Panchito.
  • Lovable Sex Maniac: All three of the boys definitely qualify in this movie.
  • Mars Needs Women: Donald and José spend a lot of time lusting after Yaya.
  • Matryoshka Object: The present Donald Duck receives from José Carioca and Panchito Pistoles at the very beginning.
  • Multinational Team: American Donald Duck, Brazilian José Carioca, and Mexican Panchito.
  • Opening Chorus
  • Painting the Fourth Wall: The Aracuan Bird breaks out of his by coming out of the picture to shake Donald's hand. He later steals José's cigar and runs off the edge of the film with it.
  • Name's the Same: A very obscure variant comprehensible only to Disney buffs, but the Pablo the Penguin here should not be confused with a certain other penguin named Pablo
  • Posthumous Narration: "..Neither him nor me was ever seen again as long as we lived!"
  • Praising Places You've Never Been To: In-Universe example when José sings about how he longs for Bahia, even though he admits to having never been there before afterward.
  • National Stereotypes: Panchito is Mexican, loud, wears a sombrero and can bullfight.
  • Nice Hat: Panchito's Sombrero, from which he generates 2 more Sombreros for José and Donald.
    • José's hat is pretty snappy too.
    • And let's not forget Donald's sailor cap.
  • No Name Given: Panchito's name is only given in the opening credits, and none of the official materials for the movie mention a last name. As a result, there have been various full names attributed to him. His first comic book appearance gave him the name El Gayo José Francisco Sandro de Lima y la Loma Pancho Allegre (Where "Panchito" is just a nickname), while modern comics (Such as the Don Rosa stories) went with Panchito Pistoles, while the House of Mouse goes with Panchito Romero Miguel Junipero Francisco Quintero González.
    • In strictest grammatical terms his given name is probably Pancho, if nothing else is certain ("ito" or "ita" is the diminutive form; the Spanish-language equivalent of calling someone "Jimmy" instead of "Jim" or "James").
      • Nope. Pancho isn't a name; it's a common nickname for the name "Francisco". So in strictest grammatical terms, his given name is probably Francisco.
  • Overly Long Gag: Panchito holds the last note of the theme song for a good 20 seconds, all the while, Donald and José try various things to stop him, including the classic cutting out the floor around him, only for everything but the segment cut out to fall.
  • Parasol Parachute: José uses his like one.
  • Pokémon-Speak: The Aracuan Bird's crazy song contains it's own name.
  • Portal Picture: Panchito brings with him a picture book of Mexico. They enter the pictures on various pages to visit various places of Mexico. Panchito even zaps the first picture they enter in order to bring it to life.
  • Random Events Plot: Pretty much, there's no real storyline except that it's Donald's birthday. Things get... confusing.
  • Real Song Theme Tune: The Three Caballeros theme song uses the same tune as an existing song, Ay Jalisco no te Rajes. In fact, when Panchito begins singing in Spanish, he's actually singing a verse from the original song.
  • Roger Rabbit Effect: One of Disney's first attempts at blending Live Action and Animation in a feature film. In Bahia and Donald's acid trip, the live action actors are appearing on a mostly animated background. In Panchito's tour of Mexico, the animated Caballeros are in fully live-action settings.
  • Rule of Fun
  • Screwy Squirrel: The Aracuan Bird, perhaps the best representative of this trope in the Disney canon.
  • Setting-Off Song: "Have You Been to Baia?"
  • Shout-Out: "But it proved to be the Juan Fernandez Islands, where Robinson Crusoe once lived. And still does, apparently..."
  • Show Within a Show: The film reel that introduces Paolo the Penguin, the kid with the flying donkey, and the Aracuan Bird.
  • "Somewhere" Song: "Baia."
  • Thirteen Is Unlucky: The card that comes with Donald's birthday gifts gives his Birthday is Friday the 13th, obviously referencing his poor luck. Although this contradicts Donald's canon birthday, which is accepted to be June 9.
  • Those Two Guys: The Fat and Skinny penguins in The Cold-Blooded Penguin.
  • Three Amigos: Averted, as this particular trope requires The Chick.
  • Wafer-Thin Mint: The Marrequito's nest, which the narrator explains only looks like it's randomly thrown together, but is really built to withstand anything... until the Aracuan gives the Marrequito a small twig to put onto the pile, which causes the whole thing to fall apart, and causes the narrator to add "Well, almost anything."
  • Wasted Soundtrack- Surprising enough despite being very catchy music, there is no soundtrack for this film. The only issuing was in the late forties and was a 3 LP set for kids. Which would be probably hard to find.
  • Zany Cartoon: One of Disney's most cartoony works.
    • With all the notes and comments about this movie's weirdness, let's face it: The Three Caballeros is like FLCL's great-grandfather or something.
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