Kuzco, l'empereur mégalo

You've often heard the sales pitch, "adults will love it, too!" almost always referring to a kids' movie and in particularly, an animated movie for children. Well, in this case I agree. Even as a middle-aged adult, I enjoyed this.

The dialog is adult-friendly but at the same time not coarse or crude with no sexual innuendos, no profanity or even a hint of it. Yet, it's hip with some very clever lines.

The story is interesting and offers a few unique twists. David Spade does a fabulous job narrating, has a very pleasing voice, one that's fun to hear. I actually do think adults would like this more than children.

It is truly amazing what stemmed from The Emperor's New Groove, which at one point seemed like a doomed project. Originally titled Emperor in the Sun, the film was going to focus on a selfish emperor who optimistically switched positions with a peasant look-a-like who would later become the target of an evil witch's plan. She was going to summon a dark spirit to block out the sun to prevent her from aging, almost like a retelling of Dorian Gray.

The film developed an untold amount of stress for everyone involved. Producer Randy Fullmer was aggravated that production was moving at a snail's pace and was consistently rushing director, at that time, Roger Allers to speed along, offering him no extensions. The project had to be done as fast as possible in order to meet the strict summer 2000 deadline. Out of options, Disney hired the director Mark Dindal, who had worked on the musical Cats Don't Dance, one of the few animated films not to boast the Disney label, and both him and Allers developed very different story lines for the same film, one focusing on comedy (Dindal's) and one heavy drama and morals (Allers).

At the end of the day, Fullmer denied Allers an extension and he abandoned the project, leaving all the weight on Dindal's shoulders. The project did not make the summer 2000 deadline, but went on to be released during the wintertime of that same year, something one must applaud considering the treacherous state it was in for so long. What Dindal managed to do to a project that looked to be a lost cause from there on out is truly astonishing, proving that even the dustiest pieces of work can be polished off to look good. The Emperor's New Groove is a delightful film, occupying a concise runtime, unstoppable action scenes, and fierce and interesting characters rarely striking a wrong note.

The story focuses on Emperor Kuzco (voiced by David Spade), the selfish, manipulating emperor of the Inca Empire. After firing his adviser, Yzma (Kitt), her and her dim-witted assistant Kronk (Patrick Warburton, who also voices Joe Swanson from Family Guy) concoct a scheme to kill the Emperor by making him drink a poisonous potion. During a staged dinner, the potion gets switched and Kuzco is turned into an unattractive llama. Hidden inside the bag of Pacha (Goodman), one of the Emperor's peasants, the two realize they must work together, despite being on opposite ends of the food chain, to try and get Kuzco his position back.

It is pretty clear that the "he was a selfish man" story has been well-played out. It was just six years after this that the Pixar film Cars modified the formula and injected it with a nostalgic rush to put it to use. The story is moved along by its refusal to provide a heavy-handed moral or become bogged down with complications from such a simplistic story. This is a genial exercise in smooth, involving animated filmmaking, moved along by its action and its instantly lovable characters.

Also, there is something nice about returning to the wholesomeness of an animated picture from the early 2000's. Ever since the creation of full length CGI pictures, which all started with Toy Story in 1995, it appears hand drawn animation and claymation have been unfortunately pushed to the side, while the easier way is taken out. I love CGI animated features, especially the ones from Pixar, but really, how much of the candy-coated colors and the overly cheery atmosphere can you healthily stomach? The early 2000's animation is one of the few successful hybrids, perfectly blending the simplicity of animation with the digitized color enhanced textures.

This is also an elegant reminder to parents and teens who enjoy nostalgia that 3D is a tainted gimmick. Here, the characters pretty much gleefully jump off the screen as if boundaries have been shredded, and they are so lively even without the dim colors or the extra dimension. This is the kind of animated feature Disney should be striving for, and they would be much closer to their competition at Pixar.

The Emperor's New Groove is animated slapstick, and functions inside such a rare formula so well. It is elegantly voice acted, expertly animated, and it is nothing but surprising that a picture that one seemed doomed has now gone on to be such a remarkable picture.

Voiced by: David Spade, John Goodman, Eartha Kitt, and Patrick Warburton. Directed by: Mark Dindal.

Hard to see why it wasn't a wildly popular mega-hit - I have two theories, one charitable, one not. The charitable theory is that people were put off by the title. MY heart certainly sank when I heard it. I mean, just say it out loud - "The Emperor's New Groove" - now how could a good movie POSSIBLY have a title like that?

Yet now, I rather like the title. It fits the story; it doesn't care if it's fashionable or not; it's just so pleasingly RIGHT - but in an almost indescribable way you'll have to watch the film to find out. Maybe it WAS a marketing mistake. Who cares? I never took seriously the charge that Disney's artistic decisions were made by its marketing department, anyway.

That was the charitable explanation for why it made considerably less, inflation adjusted, than every other one of Disney's animated features from "Beauty and the Beast" on, and failed to even get nominated for a "Best Picture" Oscar in a year in which they had difficulty coming up with half-plausible candidates. The uncharitable explanation is probably closer to the truth. People are idiots. This is a classic - but it's also animated - by pencil on paper rather than finger on keyboard - so who will ever notice?

Doubt me? You won't once you've seen it. Everyone to speak of who did reports that it's very, very funny, and they're right - and trust me, nothing is ever THIS funny unless it's clever and witty as well. It goes without saying that their character animation is unmatched in its brilliance and ... I've already used the words "humour" and "wit"? Well, I'll use them again. In addition there's a charming dottiness that a merely hip film could never quite capture. Art direction is perfectly judged and consistent throughout, with a pleasing absence of because-we-can computer effects.

Here's just ONE example of what I'm talking about. One side of the emperor's palace consists of this HUGE golden face, and we find out in a funny scene (but they're all funny) that all excess water is drained out through the nostrils. But that's not all we see. We see characters crawling out of the nostrils, we see someone dangling like a big booger on a rope out of one of the nostrils - one snot gag after another - yet no explicit camerawork ever draws our attention to them. Not only do the characters deliver their lines perfectly deadpan, the camera delivers its images perfectly deadpan. It's just perfect.

Two more things I should mention. Unlike Disney's other recent features, it never, not even for a second, feels as though the story has been unduly compressed - and at 78 minutes it's a trifle shorter than most.

Also, despite the constant hilarity, it's rather touching.

No movie I've seen in the past six months has filled me with such joy. Well, perhaps there have been a few others, but they were all made long ago.

"The Emperor's New Groove" is stylistically a break from Disney tradition - it's closer in tone to the Genie in "Aladdin" or some of their TV shows than most of their movies, making a refreshing change. In fact, you could be forgiven for thinking that this isn't a Disney movie at all... the only talking animal has a good excuse for yapping in the voice of David Spade, the only romantic relationship is that between Pacha and his wife (and even there it's more the sign of a happily married couple), and apart from the Emperor's Theme Song Guy ("He's the hippest cat in creation...") - and Sting over the end credits, but we'll forgive that - no one bursts into song. Plus the emphasis is more on Warner Bros-type energetic humour than usual. No wonder it was a disappointment at the box office; not your traditional Disney movie.

Then again, "The Rescuers Down Under" was an underrated pleasure as well.

The story isn't particularly different - you've got the ruler who has to change externally before he can change internally ("Beauty and the Beast"), Kronk, the good-hearted sidekick of the villain (Yzma) who can't bring himself to kill the hero ("Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"), and so on - but as is often the case it's not so much what the plot is as how it's handled. Although the movie suffers from "Is-that...?" syndrome - it's too hard not to see Finch from "Just Shoot Me!" every time Kuzco speaks (strangely enough, even though Pacha's wife has the voice of Wendie Malick from the same show, I never pictured Nina Van Horn... which isn't the case with "Fillmore!", where Miss Malick voices Principal Folsom. Go figure) - the movie's speed, energy and high humour rate make it easy to forgive, with Kuzco and the bad guy's sidekick as standouts. The movie's also a bit more self-reverential than other Disney movies, notably in our hero's narration (plus at one point Yzma and Kronk notice they're leaving a blue trail behind them, which turns out to be the trail they leave on the map to the palace illustrating the race between them and our heroes).

The surprising thing is that it even works with character - though the Emperor is enough of a self-absorbed hedonist (to a prospective wife: "Let me guess - you've got a really great personality") to turn off Paris and Nicky Hilton, he and Pacha have a believable relationship throughout the movie, so that by the end we're rooting for him to get turned back into a human. Too bad Marc Shaiman's score was thrown out (he'd have been a natural, as opposed to John Debney), but no sense whining over what might have been. An adventure, a comedy and a drama all in one, "The Emperor's New Groove" has everything that was notably absent from DreamWorks' own South American-set cartoon "The Road to El Dorado" (charm, interest, no Elton John overdose and so on) and is the funniest movie from the House of Mouse since "Aladdin." It's easier to forgive them for giving the world "Dinosaur" in 2000 as well.

Why DOES she have that lever, anyway?

Although my affection for other Disney movies of the 1990s has decidedly waned, my love for "The Emperor's New Groove" is still as strong as ever. In fact, I'm now beginning to think it's a work of genius. It's clever, unpretentious, fast-paced, and- like "Lilo and Stitch"- you don't feel that the vision of the film was muddled up by the suits. The characters are not constantly breaking into song, and there is a welcome lack of cloying sentiment. No cutesy talking teacups here! The lightning- fast comic timing, sharp writing and constant loony non sequiturs (i.e. "For the last time, we did not order a giant trampoline!") improves upon each viewing, and the voice work is uniformly excellent, from David Spade's hilariously bratty emperor to Patrick Warburton's dim boy-toy Kronk to Eartha Kitt's Yzma (an over-the-top screeching Erte-style villainess with an alleged "secret lab" who is also "scary beyond all reason"). You get the impression that everyone involved had lots of fun making this. The art direction, with its whirling cartoon Inca motifs, is simultaneously goofy and gorgeous- and it shows what marvels can be done with nary a pixel in sight. I even love all the local L.A. humor, with even Bob's Big Boy making an appearance. Although I was initially dismayed when I heard that the project, originally entitled, "The Kingdom of the the Sun," was to be changed to "The Emperor's New Groove," I think in the end the changes were a good thing. Did the world really need yet another bombastic Disney musical?

No, I didn't think so either.