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Title: Walt & El Grupo
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, just tell your kids that smoking is bad and they'll be fine. Recommended for all ages. |
Walt Disney always said that 1941 was the toughest year of his life. A large part of that probably had to do with the Disney Strike, where animators put down their pencils and picked up protest signs for better pay. It was also the time many animators were being drafted in preparation of World War II. During this time Walt needed some R & R, and the government made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: We’ll send you and several of your animators on a seven-month goodwill tour to South America. The trip would be paid for, and whatever movies were made as a result of the trip would be covered by the government (in the event they didn’t make money).
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Not feeling like making animated features with a strike and wanting some time away, it’s pretty easy to see the appeal of this arrangement. So Walt took his wife and several of his animators to the various countries in South America. The idea of the trip, I suppose, was to win some friends for the upcoming war and take notes to make films that would help in this cause. The films that were inspired by this trip would be “Saludos Amigos” and “The Three Caballeros.” How were these films inspired by the trip? Outside of a few familiar landscapes and songs, I’m not sure.
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While all this may sound ripe for a documentary (and who knows, maybe it is) the film itself meanders around and seems to have no real purpose outside of what I just told you. It’s not discussed exactly how the trip really inspired the films. It’s not discussed what was really learned. For all we know the animators just went, took some pictures, and danced while drinking margaritas. We see very little on how this trip affected the movies, the animators, or the overall life of Disney. This is also a poorly edited film, with a lot of talking heads and pretty overshot's.
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The film runs for almost two hours and feels like an hour special. Shots of Latin America stretch on for long periods of time that make no sense, and watching people read letters to home are as interesting as…well, watching people read letters to home. Released shortly after two other Disney documentaries (in what has been known as a trilogy of some sort), “Walt & El Grupo” is easily the weakest of the three, and doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on even if it weren’t for the other two documentaries Disney released last year. The documentary is either informative or interesting, which makes this feel like desperate cash grab (and trust me, you don’t turn to documentaries when you need quick cash).
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