The Emperor's New Groove (2000)

3 out of 4

Starring: voices of David Spade, John Goodman, Eartha Kitt, Patrick Warburton, Wendy Malick

Director: Mark Dindal

Time: 78 mins

The Emperor's New Groove is a different, and welcome, species of Disney animated film. The venerable studio has diversified from its traditional 2-D style over the past few years, what with the computer-generated Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug's Life (though these three were more the work of Pixar anyway), and last year's Dinosaur. The Emperor's New Groove is still hand-drawn and 2-D, but it's more the style of film that has changed. Most of the Mouse's offerings over the last dozen years have involved the following elements: a hero/heroine longing for a wish/dream; a nasty villain; cute sidekicks; a romantic angle; and a song-filled soundtrack often with one or more Broadway-style production numbers. Classics like The Little Mermaid, Beauty And The Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King typified this approach, and showed how good Disney could be at their craft. The more they used this formula, however, with less charming works like Pocahontas, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, and Tarzan, the more it seemed like they were running out of ideas. Now, with New Groove, Disney seems to have said, "Let's get rid of our own conventions, and just make a funny movie."

The Emperor's New Groove is atypical in the sense that there are no heroes/heroines with a dream, no cute and cuddly sidekicks, and only one major song (sung by Tom Jones) at the very beginning. Well, the hero, Emperor Kuzco (David Spade) does have a dream - that of building a "summer" home with a water slide on a hilltop - but he's not your usual, innocent Disney hero. For example, he's quite callous in his dealings with his subjects, and in particular, the kind-hearted Pacha (John Goodman), whose hilltop village would be destroyed if the Emperor goes ahead with his summer home plan. When Kuzco goes one step too far and fires his advisor Yzma (Eartha Kitt), along with her dimwitted assistant Kronk (Patrick Warburton), Yzma uses a magic potion to turn Kuzco into a llama. The rest of the film concerns Kuzco's subsequent journey of self-discovery as he attempts to make it back to his palace. Pacha goes along for the ride, and, through a variety of misadventures, teaches the Emperor what it means to have a kind heart.

There are plenty of laughs in The Emperor's New Groove, though it's not the raucous, laugh-out-loud humour I had been expecting (based on similar Disney efforts like 1997's underrated Hercules). Much of it is gentle comedy, revolving around the initially grudging but warmly developed friendship between Kuzco and Pacha. There is one deadpan one-liner, however, which brought the house down. The line itself wasn't all that funny, but like the famous "He slimed me" comment from Bill Murray in Ghostbusters, the actor's delivery and the situation he was in turned it into a classic moment. The antics of Kronk are also pretty funny, exasperating as they are to his mentor Yzma.

All jokes aside, what one notices about this latest Disney offering is how lean and mean it is. Its running time is less than eighty minutes, and there is a clear lack of songs, sidekicks, and slapstick. There are really only four characters in the film, which allows each to be developed quite fully. There's the selfish Kuzco, the good Pacha, the evil Yzma, and the dumb Kronk. Also, every traditional animated feature released by the Mouse since The Little Mermaid, with the notable exception of The Rescuers Down Under, seems to have had five or more songs on the soundtrack. The Emperor's New Groove just seems content in concentrating on the story and humour, which may have contributed to its less than average returns at the North American box office. Most kids probably won't get the adult-oriented jokes, and they'll turn restless fairly quickly at the scarcity of slapstick, sidekicks and songs. Which is a shame, really, as I feel there is a place for animation aimed at adults as well as children.

To go with the lean and mean nature of the film, the voice talent assembled here is nowhere near as impressive as that brought together for, say, The Lion King, but the actors do a great job anyway. David Spade, the former Saturday Night Live member and current star of TV's Just Shoot Me, is appropriately snide and off-putting initially, before learning a touch of kindness later on. And he delivers that great one-liner previously alluded to. John Goodman is wonderful as Pacha, whose home is threatened with destruction by his emperor, but still opts to to save him anyway. Eartha Kitt looks fine in cartoon film, with a touch of Cruella De Vil thrown in for good measure. And Patrick Warburton (The Dish) is perfect as the IQ-deprived Kronk, who gives evil henchmen a bad name. That these four characters make you periodically forget about the animation - which is fine but not as beautiful as in Tarzan or Beauty And The Beast - shows how well the sense of immersion is. You know you're watching a cartoon, but first and foremost it is a film.

The Emperor's New Groove was originally called Kingdom Of The Sun. It was meant to be something akin to The Lion King, with heaps of majesty and grandeur. That idea was ambushed when Disney heads decided it needed an injection of humour, and new director Mark Dindal was brought in. While we'll probably never see what Kingdom Of The Sun would have been like, I applaud Disney for at least going where they have rarely gone in the past twelve years. And that is, to make a comedy, without the need for lavish song-and-dance numbers, excessive cuteness, and well-worn story paths. Its plot may be simple, but it's well-executed, and there's even a message that's universal and doesn't get rammed into our consciousness. To Disney, I say: Bravo!

(c) Joe Wong (7 April 2001)