OllieSuave-007 This is a nice Disney take to Bizet's Carmen opera. Funny song and dance characters and catchy tunes. Not terribly entertaining, but somewhat of the more unique Silly Symphonies.Grade B-

Hitchcoc 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.

MissSimonetta 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.

Dawalk-1 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.