Saludos Amigos

An agreeable-enough endeavor, Saludos Amigos boasts four Disney shorts centered around its animators’ trip to South America – with the movie also featuring live-action footage of said animators’ encounters with locals and tourist attractions. It’s agreeable stuff that’s heightened by the entertainment value of the aforementioned shorts, as the individual tales, which boast appearances by familiar figures like Donald Duck and Goofy, have been infused with a charming, lighthearted sensibility that proves awfully difficult to resist – with the inherently compelling bent of the shorts certainly perpetuating the watchable atmosphere. (The Donald Duck and Goofy pieces are obviously quite engaging, but it’s clear, too, that the second story, focused on a small plane named Pedro, fares just as well.) And while the whole thing rarely, if ever, approaches the level of Disney’s classic releases, Saludos Amigos generally succeeds as a quartet of animated interludes and a fairly compelling travelogue.

*** out of ****