The Emperor's New Groove

When most people think of fantastic Disney movies people often let this one slip by. This is by far one of my favorite Disney movies. 18 years after release and multiple viewings I can still laugh at the jokes, as they still are fresh to this day. Kids will love this and adults too. Just do yourself a favor and watch this and prepare to laugh yourself out of your seat.

A radical departure from Disney's standard approach, this movie will appeal to everyone in all age groups. My 3-year-old daughter loves it, and so do I. This couldn't be a Disney movie, there are no princesses! I would pass up all the classics to watch this movie. I suppose that technically the animation isn't as good as Snow White. All other aspects of the movie are much better. I laughed so hard I cried.

Get the DVD with all the extras.

"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.

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.