Highly Overrated But Still Good

A different way of telling a story

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a bit of a throwaway. A couple of guys are competing for the affections of a barmaid in Mexico (or Spain, perhaps). They have a series of confrontation and then the little guy goes off to fight a bull. The bull is hilarious. He and the toreador battle on and on in a kind of pointless way. There are some rally funny dance sequences. This is not great but in the Silly Symphony tradition, it doesn't matter. Watch it for a couple spontaneous bits.

This is the second Silly Symphony short released by Disney. There will be spoilers ahead:I was disappointed by this cartoon. It disappoints me each time I watch it and I have seen it at least half a dozen times. It looks reasonably good visually and there are a few good gags. But it reminds me of work being done in the early 1930s by Paul Terry or the Van Buren studio. There's nothing terribly special about this short apart from the music. It has a fill in the blanks feel to it more than anything else.I freely admit that this disappoints me because it was done by Disney-and that's hardly fair to the short. But even with that admission, it still wouldn't rise to much more than average even for a Terry short. It sort of starts falling apart when they repeat the same visuals three times when the villain is trying to eat in the cantina very early in the short and never seems to recover. The villain is basically wasted.The bullfighting sequence starts off with one tone and then abruptly shifts from silly to semi-serious for no discernible reason. When the toreador and the bull come skipping out into the ring holding hands, a playful mood is set which seems to be the intended tone of the rest of the short, only to have it veer into a more serious contest and then it lurches headlong into silly with the bull skipping and prancing around the ring seeming for all the world to b playing a bizarre game of "tag" with the toreador. Then it goes serious again It's quite strange, to say the least.This is available on the Disney Treasures More Silly Symphonies DVD release. The set is worth getting and this is a curio worth watching at least once.

Honestly, if this cartoon has committed a sin, it's that it's not as imaginative or impressive as its predecessor, The Skeleton Dance (1929). One would think that this cartoon came out before that one, because in comparison, El terrible toreador is underwhelming and not that well animated. It also borrows from the Mickey Mouse silent, Gallopin' Gaucho (1928), in which outlaw Mickey romances and rescues dancing waitress Minnie.The structure is very disjointed. The first half involves the titular toreador rescuing a sexy waitress from the unwanted advances of an officer. he proceeds to humiliate his rival, and then we get to the second half where the toreador engages in a comical bull fight. It is loosely connected to the first part only by the presence of the waitress and officer in the audience. The gags are occasionally funny and the animation is average. The last bit where the toreador pulls the bull's insides out is rather gruesome and will no doubt bother some viewers.Basically, the cartoon is average and unremarkable. Unless you're an animation nerd or you're trying to watch all the Silly Symphonies, you can skip this one without missing a thing.

It is not as if I hate Disney, I don't. As a matter of fact, I am a huge fan, and watch their films, cartoons and shows a lot. It's just that El Terrible Toreador never sat well with me, it is my least favourite Disney Silly Symphony and the only one of a cartoon series that contains many solid cartoons and a lot of gems that I disliked. Is there is a redeeming quality. Yes, and it is a big one. The music, which is sprightly and energetic and the Carmen snippets are done with so much zest and authenticity it is musically a delight. I just wish the rest of the cartoon was as good, sadly it is not and mostly lives up to its name. I appreciate that it tried to do something new story-wise, but the story in both parts really doesn't come together, lacking in character and some of it especially in the second half is baffling. Carmen's dancing is not characterful at all, I read somewhere that it is very rubber hose-style and that is a very apt description, the bullfight sequence is severely undermined by lack of any true tension and characterisation plus the only likable character is a caricature in this scene, and the ending is maybe interesting for seeing what gross-out gags at that time were like but as well as being confusing that's all it is, a very unsubtle gross-out. I didn't like the characters either, the only one who shines in any way is the Toreador and that is to do with the swagger and style and that in the first half(especially when he steals the man's beer) there is an attempt to give him some character. Carmen is nowhere near flirtatious enough sadly, pretty much the most exciting thing she does here is kick a tray, that's it. I wish I could say the same about the animation as I did the music, but I can't. It is very lacking in any kind of fluidity, and the character designs are the stiffest of any Disney Silly Symphony. The sound is also crude, and the cartoon is never funny, even the most potentially interesting gag of the entire cartoon failed due to how it was executed and the fact it may offend people. Overall, the music is outstanding and the Toreador, apart from being reduced to a caricature in the second half, is not a bad character. Other than that, right from a story that never feels right and an ending that will leave people gasping with shock or disgust than laughing, El Terrible Toreador sadly does live up to its dubious name. 4/10 Bethany Cox