Timothy E
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Three Amigos! is the story of a Mexican village terrorized by bandits and their efforts to recruit outsiders to fight for their cause. If this sounds much like The Magnificent Seven, or The Seven Samurai, the similarities are deliberate since Three Amigos! is essentially a parody of The Magnificent Seven played for laughs. Elmer Bernstein even created a film score for Three Amigos! that is reminiscent of his memorable theme composed over 25 years earlier for The Magnificent Seven. The villainous El Guapo is played by Alfonso Arau, who was not in The Magnificent Seven but played Captain Herrera in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. The location shooting at Old Tucson Studios helps to complete the film’s connection to classic Westerns.
THREE AMIGOS! BLU-RAY
Studio: HBO
Year: 1986
Rated: PG
Film Length: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1080p High Definition Widescreen(1.85:1)
Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, French DTS 2.0, Spanish DTS 1.0
Release Date: November 22, 2011
The Film
The villagers of Santo Poco seek champions to fight for them, and find their heroes in a silent film theater (this is 1916) without realizing that their fighters are Hollywood actors. The villagers’ summons for help to the Three Amigos is mistaken as an invitation to a gig for the down on their luck actors. Lucky Day(Steve Martin), Dusty Bottoms(Chevy Chase) and Ned Nederlander(Martin Short) arrive in Santo Poco to confront the bandits in what they believe is a show until they find themselves far in over their heads.
John Landis(Trading Places, Animal House) directed this film based on a screenplay by Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, and Randy Newman. Newman even contributes three original songs, including one in which the actors sing around a campfire in a scene that is deliberately made to resemble a backdrop on a movie soundstage, in a parody of Gene Autry and other singing cowboys. The farcical aspects of actors practicing their craft without realizing that the stakes are real has been employed to greater effect in other films like Galaxy Quest and A Bug’s Life. The Amigos seem to learn too soon that they have bitten off more than they can chew. The film might have benefitted had the Amigos blundered longer and farther before realizing their mistake, which would have created higher potential for ironic humor. It is possible that director Landis was even aware of this flaw, since a few years later he directed Oscar(1991), which takes advantage of the comedy of errors to fuller extent than this film.
The laughs may not be as plentiful as they ought to be in Three Amigos! given the pedigree of talent in front of the cameras as well as behind the scenes, but this is one of those films that seems to be increasingly more fun and entertaining on successive viewings. Some of the humor in this film may have been ahead of its time, a notable example being the one in which El Guapo and Jefe(Tony Plana) discuss El Guapo’s displaced aggression and whether he is unfairly taking his frustration out on his men.
Video
Three Amigos! appears on Blu-Ray in its original 1:85.1 aspect ratio using the AVC codec on a 25GB single layer disc. In spite of these limitations, the result is surprisingly excellent. Detail is excellent even though grain has obviously been removed. Moire is apparent briefly but overall the transfer is much better than expected.
Audio
The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is surprisingly immersive for a comedy from the 1980s. Dialogue is never lost under the swell of music or sound effects. The surround effects are employed especially well for a comedy film from 25 years past.
Special Features
The special features include all of the following:
Cast Interview(5:38): Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short appear in this promotional piece filmed during production on videotape.
Deleted Scenes(19:05): These include an alternate opening for the film as well as most of Fran Drescher’s scenes that were snipped from the film. It is unfortunate that Sam Kinison’s scenes may be lost to the ages. The silent movie-style title cards introducing the scenes are a nice touch and show that some love and effort were put into this release.
Also included is an illustrated booklet with an article and interview excerpted from the June 2011 issue of Empire magazine.
Conclusion
Three Amigos! on Blu-ray is a fun comedy with humor ahead of its time that may seem more contemporary now than it did in 1986. Three Amigos! is a divisive film: you either love it or hate it, and if you love it, you do not comprehend why the film does not have universal acclaim; if you hate it, you cannot figure out why some people rave about this film. (Does anyone else find the style of humor in Napoleon Dynamite to be very similar to this film?) The video presentation is very good, and the audio is excellent. The special features are very interesting and it is obvious that a lot of effort went into their presentation, including the creation of the silent film-style caption cards. Three Amigos! may not be the greatest comedy ever made, but it is not the worst either. Aside from its merits, the talent behind the scenes and on screen in this film makes it worthy of recommendation, even if the sum is not greater than its parts here. If you have never seen this film, you should definitely check it out.
The scene is even available on Hulu and those lines are intact. I wonder what happened? It seems way too random to be a mistake but on the other hand, why would Landis arbitrarily decide to cut these lines after all this time?
