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#315 - The Emperor's New Groove
Marc Dindal, 2000
The self-absorbed emperor of the Incans is accidentally transformed into a llama by his vindictive chief adviser and must find a way to turn himself back.
The Emperor's New Groove feels like a breath of fresh air after the last couple of animated films I've watched, if only because it managed to make me laugh a lot. It runs off an admittedly conventional Disney plot by having incredibly selfish protagonist Emperor Kuzco (David Spade) turn into a llama as part of a failed assassination plot by his power-hungry adviser Yzma (Eartha Kitt) and her dim-witted but good-natured manservant Kronk (Patrick Warburton). He then spends the bulk of the film grudgingly co-operating with Pacha (John Goodman), a kind-hearted peasant who wants to stop Kuzco from building a giant swimming pool on the same hill where he lives with his family. Together, the two of them have to contend with South America's treacherous landscape and vicious wildlife, all while Yzma and Kronk try to finish the job they started.
What the movie lacks in an original plot (and you will be able to pick a lot of the beats that this movie uses - the major exception being the lack of a romantic sub-plot), it more than makes up for it by having a rather constant stream of funny jokes. I appreciated the banter and physical humour that erupts between characters - having the film bounce between two very similar pairs of characters means that there's twice the need for odd-couple humour, but the film's response is to deliver twice as much. The interplay between Kuzco and Pacha is frequently good, but it's not quite as good as that between Yzma and Kronk, the latter of whom practically steals the show with his charmingly dense baritone. There is also some nice metafictional humour such as Kuzco's frequently unreliable narration being played for laughs as well as the movie hand-waving plot holes in some amusingly ridiculous ways. I also appreciated the absence of musical numbers save for the opening theme, which was a nice touch considering how much other Disney films from the same era seemed to depend on having numbers. Of course, its short length and lightweight nature means that there's not a whole lot of emotional heft to it, but that just means it avoids getting completely bogged down in typical Disney sentimentality and instead ends up delivering a pretty rapid-fire comedy, so if that's all you're after then dive right in.
Marc Dindal, 2000
The self-absorbed emperor of the Incans is accidentally transformed into a llama by his vindictive chief adviser and must find a way to turn himself back.
The Emperor's New Groove feels like a breath of fresh air after the last couple of animated films I've watched, if only because it managed to make me laugh a lot. It runs off an admittedly conventional Disney plot by having incredibly selfish protagonist Emperor Kuzco (David Spade) turn into a llama as part of a failed assassination plot by his power-hungry adviser Yzma (Eartha Kitt) and her dim-witted but good-natured manservant Kronk (Patrick Warburton). He then spends the bulk of the film grudgingly co-operating with Pacha (John Goodman), a kind-hearted peasant who wants to stop Kuzco from building a giant swimming pool on the same hill where he lives with his family. Together, the two of them have to contend with South America's treacherous landscape and vicious wildlife, all while Yzma and Kronk try to finish the job they started.
What the movie lacks in an original plot (and you will be able to pick a lot of the beats that this movie uses - the major exception being the lack of a romantic sub-plot), it more than makes up for it by having a rather constant stream of funny jokes. I appreciated the banter and physical humour that erupts between characters - having the film bounce between two very similar pairs of characters means that there's twice the need for odd-couple humour, but the film's response is to deliver twice as much. The interplay between Kuzco and Pacha is frequently good, but it's not quite as good as that between Yzma and Kronk, the latter of whom practically steals the show with his charmingly dense baritone. There is also some nice metafictional humour such as Kuzco's frequently unreliable narration being played for laughs as well as the movie hand-waving plot holes in some amusingly ridiculous ways. I also appreciated the absence of musical numbers save for the opening theme, which was a nice touch considering how much other Disney films from the same era seemed to depend on having numbers. Of course, its short length and lightweight nature means that there's not a whole lot of emotional heft to it, but that just means it avoids getting completely bogged down in typical Disney sentimentality and instead ends up delivering a pretty rapid-fire comedy, so if that's all you're after then dive right in.