Disney Taking on the Three Caballeros in Ducktales
The Ducktales reboot has never failed to disappoint me. Others may complain, but I became a Ducktales fan when I was a little older, and thus lacked a lot of the sentimentality to the original while appreciating the series for its storytelling, characters, and universal appeal.
We have gotten a proper Three Caballeros episode. What’s more, we have a Three Caballeros episode that pays homage to the original trippy movie.
The Three Caballeros was a Disney war era film that chronicled Donald’s friends from other countries arriving for his birthday and showing him their cultures and celebrations. Jose Carioca takes Donald on a whirlwind trip to Baia, Pancho Pistolas sings about the value of friendship and enjoying love in Mexico, and the Aracuan Bird breaks the fourth wall to pop in his feathery head and mess with the animation frames. As you can tell, the movie is a borderline package film that starts with two hilarious cartoon shorts, and then discusses the friendship between Donald and his friends.
With all of this, it’s very hard to ground the Three Caballeros in a semi-realistic atmosphere. We do have them making appearances in a wonderful Epcot ride that has no wait time (and thank goodness for that so that we can sing along), a cameo in the cartoon House of Mouse, and references in the comics to their various off-screen adventures. You have to acknowledge that they break the fourth wall a lot, and intend to confuse the viewers about their dynamic energy and story.
The Ducktales approach is that the trio are good friends, and fun music buddies, but ultimately Jose and Pancho bending reality would not pay off in a world where Donald struggles to find a well-paying job and the family battles the baggage of losing Della Duck. You cannot have someone mess with the color scheme or the animation cells, or even add in live-action performers to blow the viewers’ minds even more. This is a good thing, because in all honesty if you try watching The Three Caballeros, you will wonder what the animators and screenwriters were thinking. Is it a birthday celebration? A film meant to celebrate the United States’ relationship with South America as it was slowly deteriorating in real life?
We get to the reboot reunion, as Donald plans to see Jose and Panchito. Donald lampshades the lack of grounding when he considers his time as a Caballero awesome, and Scrooge brings him back to Earth by telling the kids that the Three Caballeros was Donald’s college garage band, and that they weren’t successful because Donald is a terrible singer. (I will DEFEND Donald’s singing to the ends of the Earth because how dare you, Uncle Scrooge?) What’s more, when Donald worries that he isn’t cool enough for his friends, Scrooge tells him that giving up his dreams to take care of his family is nothing shameful, and he owns a boat and works hard.
Donald serves as a mirror to the millennials of today. Our generations struggle to handle the responsibilities that certain callous politicians and ignoramuses have foisted on us, while wanting to pursue art or music and also steady employment in the face of an impending economic crisis.
Donald has never talked about what he wanted besides stability and his nephews’ approval. He can lead an adventurous crew to rescue Scrooge, and take on various foes who threaten his kids. We know he has dreams, but also a heavy sense of responsibility. In the first season, his greatest wish was to get a well-paying if boring and safe job to keep the triplets well-fed and housed on their boat. Over the series, he will return to his home roots occasionally while joining in on a Scrooge adventure, but will still prefer to repair his boat and search for jobs.
We find out that he enjoyed his time in college with the Caballeros because, even if no one thought they were cool, his friends thought that he was cool enough for them. Plus, he trusted them to visit the triplets after Donald left a bereft Scrooge in the wake of the Spear of Selene tragedy. Donald doesn’t trust anyone with his boys, apart from a babysitter and Scrooge. Honestly, I want to see the story of that visit, and what the triplets’ lives would have been like with having several uncles.
Ultimately, the episode has to hammer in a sobering reality: most people don’t accomplish their dreams, and that is okay. Jose, Panchito and Donald all lie about their successes, only for the truth to come out by the end. Despite the fact that Jose and Panchito can perform well, they have to take up menial day jobs to pay their bills. Donald also believes their band was great, but despite his talent on the accordion and the bass, his singing is more of a weapon than anything else when a carnivorous plant tries to eat his family. I will defend the singing, but no one else in the Ducktales universe well, especially not the plant. Scrooge hammers in the reality check when he smashes Panchito’s guitar on the pretext of being old and feeble. Ultimately, the trio decides that while they cannot recapture their college glory days, having each other’s friendship is enough.
In all honesty, I’d like to see a continuation of the plot about Donald finding out how to balance his dreams with his responsibilities and obligations. We know that Donald has made a lot of sacrifices for the kids, not the least being the amount of grey feathers that he must have from the boys’ shenanigans and desires to seek adventure in exciting pastures. And we also know that Donald is a hero, as the Greek demigod Storkules told him; he may want to shy away from adventure, but adventure will always find him. Now we know that Donald has passions, desires to be cool, that aren’t related to either his family or to adventure. And that brings more layers to his character, the way that vintage cartoon shorts about him traveling in Peru or gluing recipes into a scrapbook would develop him. Disney promoted Donald as a character who would embody all his various incarnations in American, Italian, Dutch, and English comics. We are happily starting to see that.
Thank you, Disney, for bringing the most dynamic characters into the Ducktales universe and for doing a rather cool remix of their iconic, really trippy song. As soon as you release the Legend of the Three Caballeros into the United States, then maybe I can properly view the show and not feel so lost on seeing a more cartoony world where Donald’s butt-monkey status is treated for laughs, and he quickly loses any semblance of financial or emotional stability.