The Emperor's New Groove

I’m really sorry for putting this review up so late, but I had a really crazy day. Enough about that, let’s get to today’s review on “The Emperor’s New Groove,” released in 2000. In the animation realm, the word “cartoon” doesn’t seem to be used, because it makes people think the film will be six minutes long with the Looney Tunes characters, rather than a film that is 100 minutes long and made $200 million. Roger Ebert said in his review, “I've trained myself to refer to them as "animated features," but now here comes Disney's "The Emperor's New Groove," and the only word for it is "cartoon." I mean that as a compliment.” This is not an animated musical that has the usual archetypal tale about mermaids, lions or brave Chinese girls. You can call this a goofy slapstick, with the thinking of Donald Duck. The plot is a clear excuse to put together the look one-liners, and the characters are put together, also, although they smartly look like the actors who voice them, so that in a way we know them already.

Look at Emperor Kuzco, who is the ruler of the mythical land that looks like somewhere in South America. He’s voiced by SNL alumni, funny man David Spade, and he’s a lot like the characters Spade always plays, a laconic, pessimistic wise guy who is also a narcissus. Ebert stated that, “A little of Spade goes a long way, but here the animation provides enough distance so that I actually found myself enjoying Kuzco, even if his name does sound like a discount store.”

Kuzco makes a mistake in the beginning of the film, when he fires an old lady named Yzma, voiced by Eartha Kitt, who swears revenge. Her sidekick is Kronk, voiced by David Puddy from “Seinfeld,” the titular character in “The Tick,” the voice of Joe Swanson from “Family Guy,” and Brock Samson from “The Venture Bros,” Patrick Warburton, a cook who would really like to be an evil partner in crime but simply cannot focus on the evil plot. He’s distracted by his first passion, cooking. One of the occurring jokes is Yzma’s attempt to beat Kronk into a rage of evil, and his own friendly disinterest in her plans.

Kuzco spends his days in abusing his power. He has recently relocated a village, and now has his eyes set on a hilltop site for his summer home “Kuzcotopia” – a hill currently being lived on by the cheerful peasant Pacha (the great John Goodman, who you might remember as Dan Connor from the sitcom “Roseanna”), his pregnant wife, Chicha (Wendie Malick), and their children (Kellyann Kelso and Eli Russell Linnetz). Kuzco orders them to move, not long before Yzma pours a potion into his drink that she thinks will kill him but, through a slipup, simply turns him into a llama.

The life of a llama doesn’t by its nature give itself to being lived by a smart-alecky emperor, something Kuzco quickly finds out. He slips away into the jungle, which is scary and frightening, even at night, and although he has always been into self-pity, he now finds real-life inspiration when he cries. Pacha comes in, who is a nice guy and helps Kuzco even after he finds out that he is the emperor who is now a llama that wanted his family to evacuate their home. Their relationship, which goes on with Spade’s long-running tradition of picking obese men as his co-stars, is strange for a Disney movie because the protagonist is a jerk and the sidekick is the hero.

That’s the plot, more or less. It would be thin if this was the usual Disney tale, but it’s not. “The Emperor’s New Groove” seems to have been created in a corner of the Disney office by animators who just wanted to laugh a lot and wear funny hats. The film was directed by Mark Dindal, who worked on the look of “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin,” but whose most important credit is the 1997 Warner Bros. animated movie “Cats Don’t Dance.” Ebert said in his review, “It didn't do much business, perhaps because audiences look for the Disney trademark on most animation, but I liked its visual aliveness and its cheeky storytelling quality.”

He brings the same excellence to “The Emperor’s New Groove” – he wants to be funny in the moment, and let the movie take care of itself. His style has been compared to the Chuck Jones and Tex Avery cartoons at Warner Bros., where corniness is avoided, and the animators sneak social and media spoof in between the jokes.

Ebert admitted, “"The Emperor's New Groove" began life, I understand, as quite a different kind of movie--a portentous, ambitious Disney feature along the lines of "Mulan" or "Pocahontas."” Apparently that layer didn’t make gold, and some of the original footage was recycled while other scenes were re-tracked and the original music was heavily shelved. Ebert also said, “I don't know what the earlier version would have been like, but this version is a zany tonic, more upbeat and funnier than the lugubrious "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas."” The movie doesn’t have the technical look of a film like “Tarzan,” but is a reminder that the classic cartoon look is a lovable style of its own. Ebert remembers, “When the Looney Tunes trademark came on the screen at the kiddie matinee of long ago, the kiddies would cheer in unison because they knew they were going to have unmitigated fun.” “The Emperor’s New Groove” uses that same kind of spirit.

If you haven’t seen this movie, you must. It’s very entertaining, and I like the idea of something like a road trip for a Disney movie, since it’s never been used before. Look out tomorrow for more “Disney Month.”