The Awesome ’80s in April: ¡Three Amigos! (1986)

I loved this movie as a kid. I quoted it endlessly.

“Would you say I have a plethora of pinatas?”
“You dirt-eating piece of slime! You scum-sucking pig! You son of a motherless goat!”

Etc. Me and my friends often did the Three Amigos salute – crossing our arms and gyrating our hips. It was a great movie.

Or so I thought back then. At some point I bought it on DVD via one of those cheap snapcase boxes but I didn’t actually watch it until years later when me and my wife were living in France.

When we first moved to Strasbourg we sublet a tiny little apartment from a young university student. She was spending the year studying in England so she let us the place on the cheap. She only had a single bed so she removed it. We eventually bought a surprisingly comfortable futon but for the first couple of weeks we slept on an air mattress with a tiny hole in it.

We’d blow it up of an evening (using an exhausting to use manual pump) and by morning it would be completely flat. In the middle of the night it would be about half full and the weight of both our bodies kept up slightly above the hard floor. But if someone would get up to go to the bathroom the weight of the other would flatten it leaving the sleeping person confused and irritated.

We only had one chair in that flat, and it was uncomfortable so we spent much of those first two weeks sitting on the floor, backs against the wall. I had brought a couple of those old DVD/CD binders full of movies and we would watch them on our laptop.

One of the first movies we watched was Three Amigos, probably because I had all of those fond memories and we wanted something funny to alleviate our discomfort.

Unfortunately, my memories didn’t match what we were watching and our discomfort remained. It was not an enjoyable viewing. So much so that I haven’t watched it again until last week. And only then because our Internet was crapping out, not allowing us to stream anything and so I needed a DVD from the 1980s.

Sadly, I am unable to say that the unenjoyable viewing in France was not due to our uncomfortable setting. As an adult I just don’t enjoy this film.

It was written by Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, and Randy Newman (his only screenwriting credit, he also wrote songs for the film) and it has that disjointed SNL movie feel, but also that early Steve Martin throw all the jokes at a wall and see what sticks feel.

Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Sheen play three silent movie stars who had a long run as the, you guessed it, The Three Amigos – gunfighters who protect the vulnerable. But their latest box office returns haven’t been great and the studio head sacks them when they demand higher salaries.

Meanwhile in some Mexican village a woman sees one of the Three Amigos films, thinks it is real, and sends a wire to them asking for help and offering a large sum of money. The message gets garbled in translation and our heroes believe she’s offering the cash for a performance.

You can see where this is going. The Amigos arrive put on a show and then the real bandits arrive. At first they decide to split, because they aren’t real heroes, but yada yada yada, they come back and save the day.

That’s a pretty good set up for a funny farce. And there are some good gags. I’m not gonna sit here and pretend I didn’t laugh. But I didn’t find it hilarious.

A movie like this needs a specificity about it, it needs to lay down a solid foundation for the gags to work. There just isn’t much here for the film to work with. We don’t really know the Amigos other than they are actors. Chevy Chase hardly does anything at all. Short and Martin do some funny stuff, all within their wheelhouse, but it never feels more than them just mugging their way through a movie.

And I’m not sure what they are satirizing – silent movies? People who pretend to be heroes but really aren’t? Other than a few funny bits the movie falls flat for me.

I know lots of people love this movie. And I admit I’m weird when it comes to comedy. But after this viewing I’ll be selling my DVD and I hope to never watch it again.