¡Three Amigos! (1986)

¡Three Amigos! arrives from 1986, a year in which a Western spoof could still be assembled from three comedians, a sweeping orchestral score by Elmer Bernstein, and a Randy Newman songbook, with nobody pausing to ask what the material was saying about anything. The answer, examined with the solemnity this archive demands, is very little. Three unemployed silent film actors are mistaken for gunfighters by the residents of Santa Poco, they flee, they return, they win. The film is a machine for jokes, and it runs on slapstick, musical numbers, and the sight of Chevy Chase falling down.

On the matter of casting, the production hired Mexican and Mexican American performers (Alfonso Arau as El Guapo, Tony Plana as Jefe, Patrice Martinez as Carmen) to play Mexican characters, which in 1986 counted as ordinary professional practice instead of a stated initiative. The village itself serves as comedic scenery, a place where the heroes are pampered and the bandits are loud, and no systemic observation is offered or wanted. Carmen summons the heroes, gets kidnapped, and waits. Joe Mantegna's studio chief fires the trio over a salary dispute, a mild joke about money that stops well short of a thesis on capital.

What remains is the film's closing sentiment, that justice itself is the reward, delivered as a punchline and then abandoned. There is no sermon here, no lesson appended to the final reel, no sense that the audience is being instructed in how to live. This is a comedy that wants nothing from us but laughter, and it mostly gets it. Some vintages are simply not built for the cellar.