Wonderful Movie

Pretty Good

Great Film overall

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

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

In the intro on one of the discs of Walt Disney Treasures: More Silly Symphonies DVD set, film critic Leonard Maltin mentioned that not all the SS (Silly Symphony) shorts were great or successes, or something like that along those lines. And I think that I just may have found (and can see) this as being one of them. This is the SS featurette (if not one of them) that's definitely just at the bottom of the barrel, having seen it and judging from what reviewers at the Disney shorts site wrote about it. There are probably many others who'd choose and name this their least favorite or one of their least favorites out of the series. One reviewer claimed that the animation isn't quite up to par, even by late '20s standards. I hadn't really noticed that or, as much as I'm an animation fan/lover, I'm not quite enough of an expert to tell the difference between the illustrations in this and, say, those other SS and Disney cartoons in general. I just don't see it and have failed to do so, maybe I should watch again and closely this time eventually, just to see what the commentator was really writing about exactly. Anyway, I found it to be a so-so short, nothing truly special nor spectacular, there are better I've seen. One toreador challenges another to a bull-fighting contest after the latter toreador tries to steal away his girlfriend, a waitress, basically. Even though I find it average and not top-notch, I was okay with it anyway until near the end, when the first toreador turns the bull inside out, by reaching inside his mouth and pulls his innards outward. Now that was just way too freaky, repugnant and even cringe-inducing. That was the worst, if not only really bad part about it I found. That was a big what-the-blank surpriser or shocker of a moment right there that no one would've seen coming (I know I didn't), unless he/she were clairvoyant. If anybody is still curious and wishes to view, be my guest and check it out anyway, but you'll be repulsed by the twisted ending like I and a few others I know of were. You'll, too, be wondering just what the writers/animators were thinking, why the conception of that scene was green-lit and why (if this was actually the intent) thought it might get big laughs. That isn't even the slightest amusing. I give it half the highest star rating.

A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.A vile officer takes liberties with a barmaid, who is the girlfriend of EL TERRIBLE TOREADOR. The bullfighter then proceeds to proudly show-off his skills in the bullring.An interesting & somewhat violent little black & white cartoon, with a great many of Disney's obligatory posterior gags. Most of the music, appropriately, is from Bizet's Carmen. The surprisingly gynandrous bull could almost be seen as a precursor of the celebrated Ferdinand.The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most fascinating of all animated series. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.