Today I have some adorable animated films centered on animal protagonists from the early 1940s!

Dumbo

I don’t think I watched Dumbo a whole lot as a little one, so a lot of Dumbo seemed pretty new to me! Dumbo’s designed for maximum adorability (and they definitely achieved that!), and I think I forgot about his mouse friend completely. The sequence where Dumbo is forced to be a clown is kind of heartbreaking (not a sentence I anticipated writing today). I also forgot that they spend very little time on the flying elephant thing or even really building up to it! Dumbo and his mouse friend get drunk and they wake up in a tree 80% of the way into the movie and that’s when they figure out Dumbo can fly finally, with the help of some (weird racist-stereotype) crows.

Bambi

Goodness, you guys. Bambi is just about the sweetest, most adorable movie ever. I don’t think I watched it very much as a child (the princess movies were more my jam than the ones about animals, I guess!), but that just means that it was more surprisingly delightful than I anticipated! Seriously, everything about Bambi is lovely: the animals are so adorable, the art is beautiful, the music is lovely. Sure, Bambi’s mom still dies and his father is still kind of a deadbeat, but everything else is lovely. 🙂

Saludos Amigos

I am 100% certain I never saw this as a kid, which kind of makes sense because it’s essentially a travelogue with some animated interludes. Basically: COME TO SOUTH AMERICA! DONALD AND GOOFY REALLY LIKED IT!

The Three Caballeros

I don’t remember if I saw this one when I was younger, but I enjoyed it! This is another animated/live action hybrid about South America. (Saludos Amigos talks a little bit about the Disney animators going on a trip to South America so I guess they got a couple of movies’ worth of material out of it!)

I’m mostly familiar with the eponymous trio from the Gran Fiesta Tour at Epcot, a boat ride where they teach you a little bit about Mexico!

 

Next up in the Disney Rewatch are the animated features of the late 1940s (Make Mine Music, Song of the South, Melody Time, The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad)!