Age Recommendation: All ages, though the story is fast paced and the animation matches it so caution is advised if your younger children only watch low stimulus media.
“Oh yeah, its all coming together” -Kronk
Recently I have noticed a shift in the discourse surrounding the movies released by Walt Disney Animation Studios from the 90’s to the 2010’s. Historically the narrative has always been that the “golden age” of Disney animation was the 90’s, when Disney produced repeated musical hits, whereas Disney started going downhill and were “too experimental” after the turn of the millennium. However, the films from the 2000’s have over the past few years gained a resurgence of support largely due to the audience who grew up with them (hi, its me) have started to appreciate the risk that Disney was taking in breaking their formulaic musical strategy. Films like Atlantis and Treasure Planet have started gaining more and more appreciators, but my personal favorite of the bunch is the one that unwittingly broke the musicals trend - The Emperor’s New Groove.
Often times when a film is plagued with a troubling production and then subsequently rushed out the door, the final product is unpolished and simply not worth watching. The Emperor’s New Groove is among the few exceptions to this rule, where despite the film being completely rehauled more than halfway through its production, it manages to be a delightful comedy with positive themes and some of the best humor ever in an animated movie. For some backstory, Roger Allers was set to make a film titled Kingdom of the Sun after the success of The Lion King, set in an ancient Incan empire with music done by Sting (much like how The Lion King’s music was done by Elton John). However, the film started running behind schedule for its release and the vision he had ended up being too lofty so co-director Mark Dinal ended up taking the reigns after Allers stepped down from the project and completely changing the tone and vision of the movie, eventually turning it into The Emperor’s New Groove. Somehow, Dindal managed to pull together the already animated segments from the lofty project and ended up creating a more down to earth story driven largely by witty dialogue and excellent character work.
So what is so good about this movie and why should every family see it? Well besides being accessible to all ages, the two standout features of the movie are its humor and its characters.
The characters in The Emperor’s New Groove are some of Disney’s best and most underrated, despite their original designs and incredible voice cast. The main character Kuzco (voiced by David Spade) is clearly portrayed as a bad emperor at the start of the film, but goes through a journey and eventually learns to care about others; just about as basic of a moral story as you can have. However, the journey of how he gets there is shockingly relatable, with multiple stumbles and relapses just as we all struggle with sin. He isn’t perfect and his journey isn’t always pretty, but the film makes it clear when he does the right thing and that is always excellent to see in a movie, especially when watching with impressionable little ones. On the other side you have Yzma (voiced by Eartha Kitt), just a delightful villain in both attitude and design. No sympathetic villain here, Yzma is just an evil advisor and plays the role brilliantly. If you were looking for a villain’s redemption arc, you find that in everyone’s favorite character Kronk (voiced by Patrick Warburton). Kronk provides scene stealing comic relief as well as the occasional thought provoking line going from dumb sidekick to Yzma to dumb scout master dedicating his life to helping children. The final main character is Pacha (voiced by John Goodman), the poor peasant who learns to work with Kuzco (whom he hates) and provides a less comedic more grounded role in the film, teaching Kuzco about humility and kindness. The group all have very clear and grounded roles in the film that make it easy to pull out the lessons to be learned.
On top of excellent voice work and character design, The Emperor’s New Groove is one of if not the funniest animated movies ever. Leaning largely into absurdist humor, the movie is just pocketed with long term joke payoffs, puns, fourth wall breaks, and visual gags. It is the source of multiple memes, iconic quotes such as “Pull the lever Kronk! Wrong leveeeeeeeer!” and pioneered a less traditional way of adding humor to animated movies. It is just so easy to laugh with this movie and its ridiculous antics, and it is proper and good that we do laugh at it. G.K. Chesterton says:
“It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.”
In summary, The Emperor’s New Groove provides a simple story with a lot of heart and a lot of laughs. It marked a departure from the classic musical Disney formula with more grand adventures and ultimately delivers a project that ends up with more heart than a lot of films from the “Disney Renaissance”. Giving us some of the best characters in Disney’s lineup as well as the most laughs, The Emperor’s New Groove reminds us that you don’t need to have the most grand or most extravagant plan for a movie; oftentimes the best ones are a simple concept executed brilliantly.
Good to see a review by a fellow Emperor’s New Groove enjoyer. I remember watching this on pay per view as a kid, back when I thought it was paper view