Three Amigos! - where everyone speaks English

There was a period in the early 90s when I watched Three Amigos! quite a few times. So many times, in fact, that I can still recite many of the scenes from memory. And as a child, the rocking musical number "My Little Buttercup" was a favorite of mine.

As great as it was then, it's even better watching it now that I'm older.

As a kid, I appreciated many of the jokes, the hilarious Three Amigos salute, the physical humor, the absurdity of many of the situations, and most of the things Chevy Chase did. But as an adult, I appreciate even more. The subtle puns and play on words. The fact that it is based on the classic film, The Magnificent Seven. The spoofs of silent films. And the probing, exhaustive look at race relations in the west of the early 20th century.

Just kidding. Those are stunningly stereotypical Mexicans.

The Three Amigos - Dusty Bottoms (Chevy Chase), Lucky Day (Steve Martin), and Ned Nederlander (Martin Short) - are movie stars in the silent film age, one-reel heroes of the west. They have a salary dispute with the studio and find themselves unemployed just as they receive an offer from a small Mexican town to help save them from a local crime lord, El Guapo. They assume this El Guapo is a legend of the Mexican screen, that they are going to be doing a show with him, and that they will be paid handsomely.


They arrive in town and have a nice party when El Guapo's men arrive, looking for their annual payoff. The Three Amigos, believing it part of the show, manage to scare off his men with their wild act and mad enthusiasm. However, El Guapo returns, shoots Lucky in the foot, drives the Amigos off, loots the town, and takes a female hostage, whom Lucky had fallen for. The Amigos, disgraced, decide that they will save the girl and save the village.

They infiltrate El Quapo's stronghold just as some pesky Germans are delivering a stockpile of weapons and successfully and with much comedic relief, escape with the girl. El Guapo chases them back to the village, where the Amigos have encouraged the townspeople to fight back. El Guapo is defeated, Lucky gets the girl, and the Amigos refuse the money.

 

I could go on and on talking about all the great scenes and lines from this movie. But I will describe one that I think best represents the brilliance and stupidity that make this movie so great. The Amigos, traveling through the desert, think they have reached the fabled singing bush. Now, to be clear, the bush is loudly singing and gesticulating with its branches very excitedly, but the three guys are unsure they've found the singing bush. "Are you the singing bush?" Lucky shouts over the signing, getting no answer. They eventually decide that it is in fact the signing bush, and they each do the required ritual (to summon the invisible swordsman, of course) which ends by shooting their guns in the air. Only Dusty, going last, shoots sideways, hitting the invisible man.

"Great! You've killed the invisible swordsman!" Lucky says looking incredulous after an invisible mass hits the ground. "You were supposed to fire up! We both fired up!" Ned walks over and picks up an invisible arm and drops it. Dead.

And that's it. They come to the bush to find a guide and kill him. They leave and still find their way to El Guapo. There is essentially no reason for this scene - or the singing bush, or the invisible swordsman - other than to a) listen to the guys make ludicrous noises before shooting a pistol and b) highlight the harebrained nature of the entire movie.

Three Amigos is a fun ride, and the three SNL stalwarts are each amazing in this film. I defy you to watch this movie and not laugh out loud a few dozens times. Seriously. I would love to hear anyone's opinion on this one, because in the Scott house, this ranks very high.

Three Amigos: 6 out of 6 Patrick Swayze abs. (I'll stand by this.)

Extra abs

- John Landis also directed this one. Another American classic.

- "Wherever there is injustice, you will find us. Wherever there is suffering, we'll be there. Wherever liberty is threatened, you will find the Three Amigos!

- El Guapo is Spanish for "the Handsome One," as anyone who watches this movie could probably infer.

- "In a way, all of us has an El Guapo to face. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us, El Guapo is a big, dangerous man who wants to kill us. But as sure as my name is Lucky Day, the people of Santa Poco can conquer their own personal El Guapo, who also happens to be the actual El Guapo!"

- Steve Martin does the lasso tricks himself. Apparently, he learned them working in a magic shop as a kid.

- "Do you have anything here besides Mexican food?"

Spies Like Us - Where spies go out into the cold

In Spies Like Us, Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd are underwhelming employees of the State Department who are tricked into participating in a spy mission in the Soviet Union. They have no idea their mission is a decoy for the real, fully-trained and highly prized spy team and almost certainly lead to their deaths. They are dropped into Pakistan, talk their way out of a KGB trap, pose as surgeons, lose their one and only patient, escape to the Soviet Union, launch a nuclear weapon at the United States, force the missile to explode in space, and land two beautiful women.

If that doesn't sound like something you'd enjoy, you can go ahead and stop reading this blog because this is my kind of movie.

Directed by John Landis (Blues Brothers, Animal House), Spies Like Us is a throw back to the time when American movie villains were almost always Russian, the KBG couldn't shoot straight, and men in army uniforms couldn't wait to push big red buttons. In essence, this is a more believable and funnier WarGames.

Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd play mid-level government employees caught cheating on some test that would allow them to have better jobs. (The details aren't important.) As a result, they are assigned to a mission in the Soviet Union, though they aren't told specifics. They're thrown out of a plane above Pakistan and immediately surrounded by townspeople with guns. Shockingly, Chevy Chase, playing Chevy Chase in this movie, is unable to charm his way out. Luckily, their contacts come their rescue and they are on the road. Aykroyd realizes they probably aren't American and they run away, the KGB guys firing their guns uselessly in their direction.

They are picked up by another group of locals, and once again, Chevy's charms are lost on them as they are strung up by their ankles and almost killed. Luckily, the UN doctors assume they are the expected surgeons and promptly assign them to perform surgery on the town leader's brother. The brother dies as soon as Aykroyd makes his first incision (horrible luck) and they are once again on the run.

They manage to get to the Soviet Union somehow and stumble upon two of the UN "doctors," who turn out to be the US spy A team. The KGB return, one of the A Team is killed and Chevy is taken prisoner. They rescue him and find a Russian missile, which they are supposed to enter directions into. They overtake the Russian guards, launch the missile, and find out it's going to the US, where the brass in charge were looking to start WWIII. (Ain't that the way it always is?) They all decide the world is going to end and pair off of a few minutes of passion. Then Aykroyd devises a plan to divert the missile, a bit of glasnost ensues, they team up, war averted. The end.

Like most Chevy Chase comedies from the 80s, this one is a mix of intelligent humor, asides, bumbling from the protagonists, and a touch of locker room laughs. In the capable hands of Landis, it all comes together wonderfully. Aykroyd (who co-wrote the movie as well) is of course great with Chevy, who essentially plays the same role he does in every movie. (Think Fletch or National Lampoon Vacation.)

Take the scene in the first act when they are caught cheating. Dan Aykroyd, the straight man, sits next to Chevy, whom he doesn't know yet, and watches him cheat in increasingly inventive ways: He reads notes from the back of an eye patch, then from his cast (fake arm injury), unspools paper from his mouth, and finally writes "What does KGB stand for" on the back of the test and clears his throat to get Aykroyd's attention. (This also gets the attention of the proctor, Frank Oz.) That builds to Chevy standing up, shouting "I can't take the pressure" walking up and down the aisle looking at everyone's papers for answers before collapsing on the ground. Aykroyd says he knows CRP, falls on top of him and they discuss more answers on the floor, with everyone watching. (That's when the surveillance footage cuts off.) It's sublimely silly and performed by two comedians at the height of their game. It's infinitely rewatchable.

I miss the days when movies routinely took shots at the Soviet Union, a threat so immense yet distant that it was fun to laugh off. It's harder to laugh off the far more recent attacks by fundamentalists, attacks which hit closer to home and forever changed our way of life. (But we can bring knives on planes again!)

I enjoyed the heck out of this movie. I downgrade it one Patrick Swayze ab, however, for the incompetence of the KGB and the guards at the missile site. I'm not looking for historical accuracy in a John Landis movie, but the Soviets weren't our biggest threat because they couldn't take out Dan Aykroyd.

Spies Like Us: 5 out of 6 Patrick Swayze Abs