7 | / 10 |
Users | 3.1 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 3.8 |
When a villainous bandit terrorizes her small Mexican village, a real-life damsel in distress enlists the help of three goofy singing cowboy Hollywood stars--mistakenly believing that they are as heroic in person as they are onscreen. The wimpy actors think they are going south of the border to perform a one-time show for a large fee. As they arrive in the tiny oppressed village, they begin to realize that they are caught in a horrible case of mistaken identity and must truly fight for their lives against the evil marauder El Guapo. They cowardly run for their lives while the village is almost destroyed until they realize the importance of their mission and are forced to use real cunning and bravery to try to defeat the villain's hordes in order to prove that the Three Amigos are as truly as courageous and heroic as they appeared onscreen.
Starring: Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Martin Short, Alfonso Arau, Tony PlanaComedy | 100% |
Western | 14% |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: DTS 2.0
Spanish: DTS 2.0 Mono
English SDH, French, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 5.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
If Harry Flugleman, the maniacal studio head played by Joe Mantegna in ¡Three Amigos!, had been the executive in charge, everyone involved would have been thrown into the street. But who could have expected a flop? Steve Martin and Chevy Chase were big comedy stars at the time, and Martin Short was familiar from TV. Director John Landis still had comic credibility from Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Trading Places and even Spies Like Us -- and once again he was working with talented alumni from Saturday Night Live. Maybe it was the curse of the Western. As Landis recalls in the Empire magazine reunion interview included with the Blu-ray, people warned him not to make a Western, because they were passé. Lawrence Kasdan told Landis that the same sages warned him not to make Silverado (and a few years later they probably told Kevin Costner not to make Dances with Wolves, Billy Crystal not to make City Slickers and Clint Eastwood not to make Unforgiven). Certainly audiences coming to see a comic Western from the director of Animal House were probably expecting something broad and rude, the kind of parody that Mel Brooks delivered twelve years earlier in Blazing Saddles, with cowpokes siting around the campfire farting and Alex Karras punching a horse unconscious. ¡Three Amigos! was just as silly a film, but in a different way. For starters, the whole notion of movie star cowboy heroes mistaken for the real thing has a self-conscious, ironic dimension that, in 1986, was ahead of its time. (As Steve Martin points out, 1999's Galaxy Quest repeated the same plot to great success. But Galaxy Quest was working with an obsessive sci-fi fan culture in which confusing entertainment with reality was already a running joke.) And the rest of ¡Three Amigos! takes it cue from that winking, can-you-believe-this premise. The film's villain, El Guapo, may threaten rape and pillage, and he actually does order the destruction of a town, but he's chiefly remembered for being vain about his age and quizzing his chief lieutenant about a "plethora" of piñatas. Like the heros of the title and their adventures, El Guapo is a "bad guy" in air quotes. Except for the few early converts who laughed out loud on the first viewing (and you know who you are), ¡Three Amigos! built its fan base over time, because its jokes are the kind that get funnier with repetition. Until now, though, the cruelest joke of all was the lack of any decent version on home video. The DVD released by HBO in 1999 was an embarrassment: non-anamorphic, afflicted by massive gate-weave throughout the running time, and improperly mastered so that it abruptly ceased to play during the credits. The new Blu-ray, overseen by director Landis, immediately becomes the new standard version of ¡Three Amigos!, visually and sonically, and it also contains new extras that provide valuable information about the film.
With one small reservation, which I'll discuss below, HBO's Blu-ray of ¡Three Amigos! presents the film as it was meant to be seen and more than makes up for the 1999 DVD travesty. Gone is the pervasive gate-weave and print damage, and the credits play to the end. The 1080p, AVC-encoded image features strong, saturated colors that shift as appropriate to portray the scene on display, whether it's the dusty earth tones of Santa Poco and El Guapo's hideout, the Hollywood tackiness of the Goldsmith studio, the purplish hues of the sunsets into which the Amigos ride (several times) or the soundstage technicolor prairie on which the Amigos camp, dining on barbecued bat (actually bacon). Even the parched desert crossing is colorful without being blown out by the hot whites of the sand and sun. Black levels are very good, and they need to be, or the Amigos' costumes wouldn't look right. Detail is so well delineated that the hideous patterns of the outfits the Amigos wear to their Flugleman meeting (costumes they inherited from their flop, Those Darn Amigos) are on full display. The dirt, grime and bad teeth of El Guapo and his men are also conveyed in suitably grotesque detail, along with the stitching and spangles on the Amigos' costumes. My only reservation is one that I hesitate to bring up, because of the likelihood that it will be taken out of context and magnified to the exclusion of this Blu-ray's virtues (and I'm giving it a high score). There is almost a complete absence of visible film grain, which is surprising in a film of this vintage. Every so often -- and we're talking about a handful of shots in the entire film -- a close-up on one of the Amigos' faces left me with the impression that the texture was a little too smooth. I'm not talking about a "wax dummy" effect (a phenomenon that I suspect Landis is all too familiar with, given what Paramount did to his Trading Places); it's more like the effect of too much pancake makeup. We have reached the point in the development of digital tools where it is possible to effectively eliminate film grain without stripping image detail; a recent impressive example is James Cameron's Aliens. However, just because an ability exists doesn't mean it has to be used. The decision whether or not to eliminate grain is an aesthetic, even a philosophical one. Obviously, it may also have commercial implications. For whatever combination of reasons, Landis and the technical staff he was overseeing appear to have made the decision to produce a grainless ¡Three Amigos!, and they have certainly done it the right way: leaving the full range of picture information intact and introducing no artifacts that I could detect. Indeed, judged by the standards of today's digital intermediate world, where grain is frequently non-existent in the final product, this is a pleasantly film-like image, and it certainly lacks the digital "edge" that has marred Blu-rays such as Back to the Future. I've already devoted more words to this issue than a non-problem deserves, but since it caught my eye, I couldn't say nothing. And since it's a subject that can't be raised without risking battles over lines in the sand (much like the one Ned draws), I'm taking this opportunity to articulate my observations in full before recommending the disc.
The film and DVD were released in stereo, but the Blu-ray's soundtrack is offered in 5.1 mastered in DTS lossless. The track remains front-centered, although the discrete format provides an improved sense of left and right separation during scenes involving large number of characters. The single most noticeable enhancement is bass extension. When Carmen and Rodrigo enter the church where the Three Amigos' film is being shown, the bass from the organ accompaniment is deep and powerful. Elmer Bernstein's lush orchestral score, which is also a witty send-up of Bernstein's own Oscar-nominated score for The Magnificent Seven, also benefits from the track's deep bass, as does the full range of the orchestra's instrumentation. The Amigos' songs, written by Randy Newman, have the crystal clarity of studio recordings, and no attempt has been made to make them sound otherwise. When the Amigos break into "Blue Shadow" in the middle of the prairie, the change in pitch and tone is as obvious as the painted background, and it's meant to be.
It would be tempting to call ¡Three Amigos! a cult classic, but as the Empire interview points out, the film has become more than that. The phrase has become part of sports culture, it's been used by political cartoonists, and it was referenced on an episode of The Sopranos. Even people who haven't seen the movie (or have only seen part of it) know about the three doofus movie stars with the strange salute who get mistaken for real-life heroes. At long last, there's a watchable (and affordable) version of the film that everyone can watch. For years, the Three Amigos refused to die like dogs, and now they can fight like lions. Highly recommended, even if you have a plethora of Blu-rays.
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