from IMDB
This one was really interesting, and not at all what I was expecting. I had never even heard of it until I started this project, and was surprised that several of my friends grew up watching it. Based solely on the movie poster and my knowledge of the racial insensitivity of pre-1980s cartoons, I was looking for a totally racist 75 minutes of Goofy & Co. running around with sombreros and ponchos, Speedy Gonzales-style. What we get instead is a cute documentation of a trip several Disney animators took to several South American countries, and vignettes featuring animated shorts based on their recon there.
This came across to me as, “Look, we’re actually going here and observing these people. So when we make a movie about them down the road, it won’t be ‘racist’ because we did our research and showed you that we’re not just stereotyping!” But it was also 1943, so I doubt anyone really cared about coming off as racist. My boyfriend suggests it was more like, “Hey, we want to go to South America. How can we do this on Disney’s dime?” That could totally have been how it went down. Maybe they just wanted a vacay and Europe was obviously out of the question at the time, so South America would have to do as an alternative. And then all the Nazis who escaped fled there a few years later. Womp womp.
So here we go. First off, I want to point out something I learned. Remember those awful gaucho pants everyone wore in, like, 2006? I never knew where the word gaucho came from until I watched this movie. Did other people wonder that too, or was it just me?
Also, they said they weren’t allowed to film in Uruguay. Why is that?
My favorite place they talked about was Peru. I thought that bit was really well-done, especially when they were talking about the personalities of donkeys versus llamas – animating the llamas wearing spectacles with really snobby facial expressions was spot on.
What do you guys think about this movie? It’s more like a travelogue interspersed with cute little cartoons. It’s entertaining, I guess, but I think for the educational value, you’re better off finding something else.
Up next…Victory Through Air Power!
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