¡Three Amigos!
Tags: comedy, cult, psychedelic, humor, satire, comic

Plot synopsis:
In 1916, the bandit El Guapo and his gang are collecting protection money from the Mexican village of Santo Poco. Carmen, daughter of the village leader, searches for someone who can come to the rescue of her townspeople. While visiting a village church, she sees a silent film featuring "The Three Amigos" and, believing them to be real heroes, sends a telegram asking them to come and stop El Guapo.
Meanwhile, Lucky Day, Dusty Bottoms, and Ned Nederlander are Hollywood silent film actors who portray the Amigos on screen. When they demand a salary increase, studio boss Harry Flugleman fires them and evicts them from their studio-owned housing. Shortly afterward, they receive Carmen's telegram, but misinterpret it as an invitation to make a show appearance with El Guapo.
After breaking into the studio to retrieve their costumes, the Amigos head for Mexico. Stopping at a cantina near Santo Poco, they are mistaken for associates of a fast-shooting German pilot, who is also looking for El Guapo and who arrived just before they did. The Amigos perform a show at the Cantina, singing "My Little Buttercup", and leave the locals amused. The German's real associates then arrive at the cantina, proving themselves adept with their pistols. A relieved Carmen picks up the Amigos and takes them to the village, where they are put up in the best house in town and treated very well.
The next morning, when three of El Guapo's men come to raid the village, the Amigos do a Hollywood-style stunt show that leaves the men very confused. The bandits ride off, making everyone think that the Amigos have defeated the enemy. In reality, the men inform El Guapo of what has happened, and he decides to return the next day and kill the Amigos.
The village throws a boisterous celebration for the Amigos and their victory. The next morning, El Guapo and his gang come to Santo Poco and call out the Amigos, who confess that are too scared to confront him after Lucky gets shot in the arm. El Guapo allows his men to loot the village and kidnap Carmen, and the Amigos leave Santo Poco in disgrace.
Ned persuades Lucky and Dusty to go after El Guapo. They spot a cargo plane and follow it; the plane is flown by the German, who has brought a shipment of rifles for the gang. Preparations are underway for El Guapo's 40th birthday party, and he plans to make Carmen his bride. The Amigos try to sneak into the hideout, with mixed results: Lucky is captured and chained up in a dungeon, Dusty crashes through a window into Carmen's room, and Ned ends up stuck in the piñata.
Lucky frees himself, but Dusty and Ned are caught. The German, having idolized Ned's quick-draw and gunspinning pistol skills since childhood, challenges him to a shootout. Ned kills the German, and Lucky holds El Guapo at gunpoint long enough for Carmen and the Amigos to escape in the German's plane.
Returning to Santo Poco with El Guapo's army in pursuit, the Amigos rally the villagers to stand up for themselves. The bandits arrive, only to find themselves suddenly being shot at by Amigos from all sides and falling into hidden trenches dug by the villagers. El Guapo's men either ride off or are shot, and he takes a fatal wound as well. As he lies dying, the villagers step out to confront him. El Guapo congratulates them, then shoots Lucky in the foot and dies.
The villagers offer to give the Amigos all the money they have, but the Amigos refuse it, saying (as in their movies) that seeing justice done is enough of a reward for them. They then ride off into the sunset.

Review: I looked up this movie on IMDb fully expecting to find a lot of comments that reflected my opinion, that this is a great little film.
Carnage ensues, the German sharp shooters finish off the rest of the patrons in a bloody gun fight, the confused looks on the bandit's faces throughout this whole routine is hilarious.This film isn't desperate to pack gags into every available space, and because of this it feels more controlled and less try-hard, to me most of the jokes are of a high enough quality they don't need a lot of superfluous back up gags.
The Amigos fighting back tears as Lucky Day informs his buddies that, in fact, they have been summoned not to perform, but actually to fight the evil El Guapo--Martin Short's tearful line, "Why am I in Mexico?" is hilarious, almost as funny as Steve Martin's follow-up, "I've been shot already!"This is an intelligent comedy, one that pokes fun not only at the mythology of the Hollywood western, but at Hollywood itself.
The scene with Dusty Bottoms (Chase), singing at the celebrations as if he has a frog in his throat makes me laugh every time, My little buttercup scene in the tavern with Ned (Short) with the hankerchief on his head, the calls they have to make to summon the invisible swordsman, the part in the desert..."lip balm?" I'm embarrassed to say how many times I have seen this movie, I'm just going to say a lot...and would recommend to everyone!.
All he has to do is open his mouth and show his bad teeth and then give his huge smile and I crack up every time.The three leads - played by Steve Martin, Matin Short and Chevy Chase - are all excellent and in the primes of their careers.
Chevy Chase, Martin Short and Steve Martin are brilliant in a movie that relies completely on their given talent - comedy.
Chevy Chase, Martin Short, and Steve Martin, some of the funniest men ever to work in comedy, all team up here as The Three Amigos, a group of out of work actors in early Hollywood cinema.
The unfortunate thing is that this is not a movie that is greater than the sum of its parts, since I would expect more from actors with the caliber of Martin, Chase, and Short, even working individually, but even the fact that they are all not used to their full potential is not enough to bring down the rest of the comedy here.The story involves the three out of work silent film actors, who suddenly find themselves unemployed and broke when they receive a telegram from a small village in Mexico desperately asking their assistance.
These three comic greats work with a beautiful chemistry, to make you laugh hard enough to split your pants, every time you watch this movie.
One scene rolls, painlessly, into another without making you look at your watch once as The Three Amigos attempt to stop the evil banditos (grungy, greasy, cavorting, drinking and shooting at everything -  just as in the spaghetti westerns, but with a sillier and lighter edge versus a serious and menacing one) from taking advantage of the poor peasants.This is a classic comic film, with real comics pulling out all the stops, that I feel everyone should see.
The "Three Amigos" (Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short) are a silent screen comedy act, who recently got fired from their producer (Joe Mantegna).
Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short team up to bring out what made us all love them so much on Saturday Night Live and all of their comedies to follow.The movie shows us a small Mexican village that is being terrorized by El Guapo (ironically, Spanish for "the handsome one).
Believing that this is her village's one chance at freedom from El Guapo, Carmen sends for the Three Amigos, promising a huge reward if they come, assuming that they will turn it down like they did in the show.Of course, as we all in the real world know, "The Three Amigos" is merely a TV show that, on the very day that Carmen's telegraph reaches them, is canceled and the actors fired.
Lucky Star (Martin), Dusty Bottoms (Chase), and Ned Nederlander (Short) read the telegraph and mistake it as a request for them to act out the show, and in desperate need of money, take up the offer and head down to Mexico.
If you're not a fan of slapstick (or just don't like Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, or Martin Short), then yeah, I wouldn't recommend this movie.
She telegrams an invitation to the Three Amigos; Lucky Day (Steve Martin), Dusty Bottoms (Chevy Chase) and Ned Nederlander (Martin Short).
Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short star as three silent film stars who are asked to defend a Mexican town from bandits.
It's underrated a bit, but not by much.Steve Martin, Martin Short and Chevy Chase star as film stars in the depression-era; their show is about three Amigos that fight bad guys down in Mexico.
I've always been a fan of Martin and Short, and...well...I liked Chase in "Vacation," so I think they really make this movie.
Chase, Martin and Short play silent era movie stars who get axed by their studio when their films start under-performing.
But the movie stars don't know that this show is for real.Try fitting an invisible swordsman (who gets shot), a singing bush (and a talking turtle) and a room full of hard drinking gun toting Mexican lowlifes who're scared of the sight of Chase, Martin and Short into a workable idea for a film.
A village resident named Carmen goes searching for help, and during her search, she sees a film starring the Three Amigos (Lucky Day, Dusty Bottoms and Ned Nederlander) playing in a church.
I remember the beginning of this film from both viewings, with the Three Amigos riding horses and singing "The Ballad of the Three Amigos" (a song written by Randy Newman), featuring a very long falsetto note, which I found funny both times.
However, there are eventually more really funny parts, such as the German thug in the saloon, the Three Amigos coming in after him and singing "My Little Buttercup" (also written by Newman) to the frightened men inside who think they are friends of the German, and the actors saying their lines to the village intruders!
Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short all show their talents in this film, and so do other cast members, such as Alfonso Arau as El Guapo and Kai Wulff as German.
In addition to often being funny, sometimes very much so and sometimes just a little, "¡Three Amigos!" can be exciting with the action and adventure.When I first saw this 1986 comedy, I had never seen "Blazing Saddles", a much more popular western spoof from 1974.
I didn't see that one until January this year, and I think I found it funnier than "¡Three Amigos!" overall, like probably most people who have seen both movies (though I didn't find it as funny as many others clearly have through the decades), but it didn't seem to affect my opinion on this later film of the same genre.
If you're a fan of the three comedians who play the starring roles here, you like western movies, and you want a laugh, you COULD still find this flick disappointing, but it's probably still worth a try..
First of all, any ONE of the three leads could carry a terrific comedy on his own; but Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short together are simply three times as funny, that cannot even be argued.
If when you think of an 80's comedy, you think of movies with Chevy Chase, then that would DEFINITELY include this little flick.
I'm one of the few people left alive who've seen both Under the Rainbow AND Won Ton Ton, the Dog That Saved Hollywood, the previous record-holders for the least laughs in a major comedy - I thought nothing could ever join that illustrious company, but then in 1986 Three Amigos came along.I saw it on HBO right after it came out, smoked on Heineken, with three friends who, like me, were HUGE fans of Martin Short, Steve Martin, and the other guy.
Of course, I am kidding, as this is really a charming tribute to and spoof of the earlier days of filmmaking, as a silent era Western trio, "Lucky Day" (Steve Martin), "Dusty Bottoms" (Chevy Chase) and Ned Nederlander (Martin Short), find themselves out of work after their last movie flopped and they won't listen to the studio head's suggestion.
John Landis has fun directing movies, for crying out loud, he directs some of USA Channel's Psych.If you haven't watched Three Amigos, you're not allowed to sing, use a water canteen in a hot desert, or even wear one of those big sombreros.
In this wild and goofy movie, Martin Short, Steve Martin and Chevy Chase are at their comical best.
Martin Short, Steve Matin and Chevy Chase are at their comical best as three bungling actors who find themselves having to play their roles for real.
Lucky Day (Steve Martin), Dusty Bottoms (Chevy Chase) and Ned Nederlander (Martin Short) are a silent movie trio known as the "Three Amigos".
But as those three amigos were among the best funny guys in the eighties and Landis isn't a baby with a camera, surely, all those great names imply that something good was due to come.
It's not a bad movie by any means; the concept is clever and in fact many individual segments are brilliant.But far too often the director, John Landis, seems to have been relying on his three leads (Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short) to simply "be funny" without the aid of a funny script.
The Three Amigos is little more than a slapstick comic farce featuring, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short who portray silent film cowboys.
The movie shows them trying to assimilate to the culture and people of Mexico, looking for adventure in the country, and eventually discovering that they can ride together to "save the bad guys" in a series of slapstick, Three Stooges, type of comic gags and stunts.I have never cared for Martin Short.
As for Martin Short, I have no interest in seeing him.The writing in this film appears to imply that if these three actors can do good to great comedy on their own, let's put them together and we'll have a classic film.
The kids laugh at the antics of Steve Martin, Martin Short and Chevy Chase and the adults can't help but laugh over the hokey-ness of the storyline as they re-live the movies of the "good old days" of 50's-60's "black hats versus white hats" westerns.
And, especially, if you want to see what Chase and Short were like before they turned into ridiculous jerks this is a good place to start.Also, this is the only film for which Randy Newman helped with the script.
This film is one of Steve Martin's best writing efforts, and I've noticed his best work is what he writes himself, of course having Chevy Chase and Martin Short along for the ride is only going to make a movie better!
Martin's Lucky Day is clueless, Chase's Dusty Bottom is a blithering idiot, and Short....well, he steals the film in quite a few places as former child star Ned Nederlander.Filled with priceless one-liners, ("Can I have your watch when you are dead?"), great sight gags ("Are gringos falling from the sky?") and an awful lot of clever dialogue (Jefe's questioning of El Guapo is brilliant) this movie made me laugh from start to finish, I give it 10 stars out of 10, because it lived up to my expectations of being funny, silly, and an enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half or so.
His character fits perfectly with that of Chevy Chase and Martin Short, who are equally funny in this movie.
Hilarious comedy Western with Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short.
Three silent movie stars in 1916 (Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short) are mistaken for real heroes by a beautiful Hispanic woman (Patrice Martinez) and hired to rid an oppressed Mexican village of El Guapo (Alfonso Arau) and his banditos."Three Amigos" (1986) is a comedy Western with elements of "The Magnificent Seven" (1960) and "The Wild Bunch" (1969).
The film, spoofing movies like seven samurai and the magnificent seven, has a number of good jokes and good acting from Steve Martin and Chevy chase.
A character gets shot in one scene and proceeds to do a song-and-dance routine a couple of minutes later without so much as a wince, for example: a laugh could equally well have been got by having him attempt energetic gestures without thinking and so break off hopping around in agony (I wouldn't have found that terribly funny myself, but it would have been on a level with the comedy in the rest of the film), but that would have involved a petty-minded concern for continuity that the writers of this script clearly shrug aside.Basically, I found the level of humour a bit puerile; if that makes me a snob, then so be it.
Three failed silent movie actors Lucky Day (Steve Martin), Dusty Bottoms (Chevy Chase) and Ned Nederlander (Martin Short) seemingly land up with a dream job; they get an offer of 100,000 pesos to protect a small town in Mexico - the three amigos assume that this is film work and that everyone else is along for the ride, but they soon learn that what they're involved in is real and the 3 Amigos quickly find themselves having to rescue Carmen (a Mexican girl) who has been kidnapped by the evil El Guapo (Alfonso Arau) and whom is seen by El Guapo as his own personal prize.Three Amigos is a western spoof, and for me most obviously it is parodying The Magnificent Seven.
The film has a slapstick and silly feel to it (which sometimes works) when for example there is a good visual gag or examples of amusing dialogue, but far too often there are stretches in this film where neither element exists and you're left with some sequences that aren't that funny - some of the song and dance numbers don't really work and the camp-fire scene produces rather mixed results in the comedy stakes.Where the film works slightly better is in the occasional way that it shows the flaws with our protagonists; all of them are idiots, but in different ways; I did like the way that Steve Martin's character is called Lucky Day yet more often than not, it was him that messed everything up for his Amigos - clearly an intentional irony exists with his character.
A cosy Sunday afternoon matinée comedy feature by director John Landis sees a dependable comic trio (Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short) as silent movie stars that get mistaken for the real deal.
The best asset though is definitely the performances and chemistry of the three leads Steve Martin, Chevvy Chase and Martin Short, all three are very likable and show good comic timing.
I don't think this is a total waste of time, and those who are fans of the old Saturday Night Live will enjoy seeing Martin, Chase and Short working together..
is a great comedy, highly recommended for anyone who likes to have a good laugh involving three funny film stars named Chevy Chase (well, he used to be funny), Martin Short and Steve Martin..
Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short were all excellent in this movie.
But, with Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short in the cast, you can bet there'll be some memorable scenes.
Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short who play the Three Amigos are very funny.
Then rent the Three Amigos, Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Chevy Chase alone are worth the $2..
Little does he realize that Lucky Day (Steve Martin), Dusty Bottoms (Chevy Chase), and Ned Nederlander (Martin Short) only play these Amigos on stage, not in real life.
Although Saturday Night Live has come out with very few good movies recently, this 1986 flick is a classic postmodern comedy, and is definitely worth watching.
The story concerns "The Three Amigos," a silent movie comedy team featuring Lucky Day (Martin), Dusty Bottoms (Chase), and Ned Nederlander (Short).
Steve Martin gets a lot of screen time, it seems Chevy Chase is left with the recycled odds and ends from other successful screenplays as he fumbles in search of his own time, and Martin Short isn't given much to perform with either.Three Amigos has heart, but not comedy.
Randy Newman's musical numbers provide fun and smiles, Landis's directing is above average, yet you'd find superior in his other works like The Blues Brothers and National Lampoon's Animal House, but the dry setup, the under-used talents, and the flimsy script make Three Amigos a missed opportunity.Starring: Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Martin Short, Patricia Martinez, and Alfonso Arau.
Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short team up for a screwball comedy but it's as though they think their presence alone will make the film funny.
There are being played by '80's comedy icons Steve Martin, Martin Short and Chevy Chase.
More was to be expected from '80's comedy talents such as John Landis, Steve Martin, Martin Short and Chevy Chase involved.Hightlights of the movie to me were the musical numbers, which were definitely the most fun sequences of the movie.
Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short get the roles of a lifetime in "Three Amigos!", where they have to defend a Mexican town from bandits in 1916.
Chevy Chase plays off the more outlandish antics of Steve Martin and Martin Short like the comedy veteran that he is.
This movie is extremely funny what a great trio (Chase, Martin, and Short) I loved this movie.