As a Disney oddity, they don't get much odder than Three Caballeros. Donald Duck receives a birthday package from South America, and the film proceeds to unravel like some peyote-induced hallucination. It starts out reminiscent of other Disney films, where shorts are cobbled together, such as "Make Mine Music" or "Fun and Fancy Free". The film has vignettes such as "The Cold-blooded Penguin" and "The Flying Guachito". After them it careens into part-travelogue, part-stream-of-consciousness animation. Not helping out much are Donald's "friends": Joe Carioca (a parrot) and Panchito (a rooster). They spend most of the rest of the film watching Donald chase skirt. That's right, Donald Duck is a wolf in this movie, and he chases every live-action seƱorita who bustles across the screen. Although some will say otherwise, Caballeros is for die-hard Disney, Donald or psychedelia fans only. --Keith Simanton, Amazon.com
"That damned elusive Pimpernel" finds a dashing embodiment in Leslie Howard, who has the steel to be an action hero and the wit to hide behind his alter ego: a British fop. Based on Baroness Orczy's novel, The Scarlet Pimpernel focuses on the efforts of this British dandy to aid members of the French aristocracy in escaping the guillotines of the French revolution. He also romances Merle Oberon, a beauty forgotten by recent generations and engages in a wonderfully wicked duel of wits with the humourless enforcer for the French Republicans (Raymond Massey). If somewhat short on swashbuckling, it's long on the kind of costume drama that Hollywood seems to have forgotten how to do. The film was remade in 1982 for television, in an equally engaging version starring Anthony Andrews. --Marshall Fine
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