Apollo Movie Guide's Review of Three Amigos

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Three Amigos

Apollo Score:

Readers' Rating: 80/100

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Three Amigos

What can you say about Three Amigos? To praise it might give the impression that infantile humour makes for great movies. But to pan it would be to display the typical snobbishness of movie critics, who too often forget that most filmgoers consider a fun movie to be a good movie. Rather than praising or panning it, how about this: I’ve got a pair of 11-year-old kids who consider Three Amigos to be one of the great comedies of all time. Need I say more?

This is a movie with a silly storyline that depends on misunderstanding for the plot to work – the tormented residents of a Mexican town that’s being marauded by a nasty gangster learn of heroes in Hollywood called the Three Amigos (Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Martin Short). A cost-conscious telegraph operator truncates their plea for help. As a result, the Amigos – who are actually silent movie stars who have recently been thrown out of work – don’t understand that they’re being asked to intervene in a dangerous situation. They think they’re being hired to put on a show. When they arrive in Mexico – decked out in their garish Three Amigos costumes — all kinds of craziness ensues.

It’s a ridiculous situation and Martin, Chase and Short are well-cast as the boobs who don’t figure out the bad guys are for real until well after Lucky Day (Martin) gets shot in the arm. All three actors have plenty of experience playing fools, and these characters are the dumbest, spoilt-brat Hollywood types that you can imagine. But will they run away when they realize the misunderstanding and see that the town really is at risk?

Three Amigos is 105 minutes of pure silliness, although it takes a fair bit of repetition to stretch it out this long. Like so many other comedies, this one has about half as much material as it needs to succeed as a feature film. Once the premise of nice guy klutzes struggling with danger has been milked for 15 or 20 minutes, there isn’t much left to do other than repeat the exercise again and again. By the time a town full of Three Amigos-costume clad gunfighters takes on the bad guys in the climactic gun battle, those with a more mature sense of comedy will be long since bored.

For director John Landis, whose career got off to such a great start with movies like Animal House, The Blues Brothers and American Werewolf in London, this film marked – depending on your point of view – either the end of a hot streak or the beginning of an extended slump, as it was followed by such gems as the financially successful but awful Coming to America, the money-losing Beverly Hills Cop III and the entirely unsuccessful Blues Brothers 2000.

It’s funny at times, but the language and violence make Three Amigos inappropriate for younger kids – just the folks who won’t mind seeing the same pratfalls and hearing the same bad jokes over and over again.

Brian Webster

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