- Although John Landis' ¡Three Amigos! is not based on a Saturday Night Live sketch, one can hardly help but notice the variety show's fingerprints all over this film. For starters, the cast includes SNL alums Chevy Chase and Martin Short, frequent host Steve Martin, and show circa-1986-mainstays Jon Lovitz and Phil Hartman. SNL architect Lorne Michaels also shares a screenwriting credit, and you quickly get the sense that the movie started out as a one-minute "American silent movie actors mistaken for the Magnificent Seven!" pitch and grew from there. The result is not necessarily a great movie, but one that is certainly more entertaining than the average feature-length film inspired by SNL.
- Although the aforementioned pitch adequately summarizes the film's plot, I really need to mention that Chase, Short, and Martin play characters named Lucky Day, Dusty Bottoms, and Ned Nederlander, respectively. El Guapo (Alfonso Arau), their archenemy ("He's not just famous, he's IN-famous!"), obviously came from the same bandit factory that produced Eli Wallach's character from The Magnificent Seven, and both films feature underutilized damsels-in-distress (Patrice Martinez, in this case) and a brassy score by Elmer Bernstein. The best parts of ¡Three Amigos! may be El Guapo's interactions with his underlings ("Could it be that once again, you are angry at something else, and are looking to take it out on me?") or the Amigo's many jaunty dance numbers. It also has some patently ridiculous moments featuring a singing bush and an invisible swordsman, but what do you expect when you stretch out a comedy sketch to feature length?
