I find it hard to believe that this was a World War II propaganda film. It doesn't really seem to fit that mold. Propaganda of the time was pretty heavy-handed, and most of it isn't all that entertaining today except as an artifact of the period. This movie is a joy to watch in its own right, and if there's an anti-fascist message embedded within, it's awfully subtle.
My understanding was that this was Disney's attempt to open up Central and South America as a market for their films, since the war had pretty much eliminated the European market. Whatever its pedigree, though, this is one of the few Disney videos that I don't mind watching endlessly with the kids, especially the parts that involve the titular Caballeros.
The movie is somewhat disjointed and episodic, but what holds it all together is good music. My least favorite episode is the story of the flying donkey, which gets old quickly, particularly since (and this is my one complaint) they chose to have a North American announcer attempt a Mexican accent. Why they could not have simply found an actual Mexican actor is beyond me - Los Angeles being in Mexico's backyard, after all. But Disney seemed to enjoy mixing and matching nationalities even into the 1960s, hiring, for example, US actors to play English characters in Mary Poppins, Treasure Island, and 101 Dalmatians; or Hayley Mills, who was a British actress who always seemed to be playing an American. In fact, the latter is something seen commonly nowadays, when it seems half the working actors in Hollywood are British subjects putting on American dialects (Hugh Laurie, Damian Lewis, Christian Bale).
My understanding was that this was Disney's attempt to open up Central and South America as a market for their films, since the war had pretty much eliminated the European market. Whatever its pedigree, though, this is one of the few Disney videos that I don't mind watching endlessly with the kids, especially the parts that involve the titular Caballeros.
The movie is somewhat disjointed and episodic, but what holds it all together is good music. My least favorite episode is the story of the flying donkey, which gets old quickly, particularly since (and this is my one complaint) they chose to have a North American announcer attempt a Mexican accent. Why they could not have simply found an actual Mexican actor is beyond me - Los Angeles being in Mexico's backyard, after all. But Disney seemed to enjoy mixing and matching nationalities even into the 1960s, hiring, for example, US actors to play English characters in Mary Poppins, Treasure Island, and 101 Dalmatians; or Hayley Mills, who was a British actress who always seemed to be playing an American. In fact, the latter is something seen commonly nowadays, when it seems half the working actors in Hollywood are British subjects putting on American dialects (Hugh Laurie, Damian Lewis, Christian Bale).