WesternAnimation Chuck Jones does Disney — and it's AWESOME!
A movie with such a tumultuous development has no right to be this good.
Much has already been said about the chaotic rework of The Emperor's New Groove, so I won't rehash it here. All I can say is that this Disney animated movie is the most un-Disney-animated-movie animated movie to come from the House of Mouse, and it's well worth watching for that alone. It's zany, it's irreverent, it's charming, it's touching, it's a movie that fell out of a cosmic wormhole from a parallel dimension where Chuck Jones worked for Disney and got free rein as a producer.
The truth is, Groove works so well not because of its un-Disneyness, but because it still manages to be Disney while not being Disney. It's irreverent without being meaningless, it's funny without being cruel, it's charming without being subversive. Underneath all of its gags and anachronisms and slapstick, there's still a heart and a soul at the center of the movie — just look at all the heartwarming moments for proof. Pacha is the movie's moral center, and it's inspiring to see his unwavering trust in the fundamental goodness of man (and llama) eventually elevate the selfishly cynical Kuzco into becoming a better person (llama).
Without this warm gooey center, the movie would just be a 90-minute jokefest and quickly forgotten. But because it is there, the movie ends up as a delightful balance between sweet and silly, with the warmth from Pacha and his family playing flawlessly against the wall-breaking reality-bending goofball slapstick antics from everyone else.
The Emperor's New Groove — come for the memes, stay for the charm.
BOOM BABY!
WesternAnimation Cheesy goodness
Emperor's New Groove isn't revolutionary, or the most hilarious thing in the universe, or that beautiful, or have that deep a plot.
It does have Tom Jones, Patrick Warburton, and Eartha Kitt enjoying themselves and reaching new levels of ham.
Really, that's enough of a reason to watch it.
WesternAnimation A delightful postmodern comedy.
Some entries from nineties Disney have tonal problems, where they struggle to juggle the comedy or hip tone of the era with the appropriate grandeur and drama or authentic flavor of their base stories. Films like Hunchback and Hercules can feel unsure what they want to be, and often come across as inappropriately silly or modern for the general goals of the production. This film neatly avoids all of those problems...by never once pretending to take itself seriously.
I am so glad this film exists.
The Emperor's New Groove is the story of an Inca-esque nation ruled by Kuzco, a young adult narcissist who has a petty snide comment about everything and impossibly high standards. When his scheming, usurping advisor Yzma and her henchman Kronk turn him into a llama instead of murdering him as intended, he finds himself in the hands of a kind peasant named Pacha...whose request to protect his family land Kuzco had just recently rudely refused.
This film is a comedy first and foremost and never lets itself veer into dramatic styling that comes at odds with this framing. And gosh, it's funny. The animation is pitch-perfect, with slapstick and visual gags coming at you at a hundred miles an hour all with perfect timing and goofy setups. Scene transitions and narration leave the fourth wall flimsy. The dialogue and voice cast are also perfection. David Spade is the perfect bitchy narcissist, John Goodman is the guy to play any tough sweetheart like Pacha, Eartha Kitt's Yzma is hammy enough to rival Hades, and Patrick Warburton makes Kronk the most endearing handsome idiot in the world. The film's comedy and more importantly, its execution, are on par with the best Looney Tunes shorts, being tremendously silly and perfectly played.
The characters themselves are also good, despite the lack of huge emotional weight or sappiness. Kuzco and Pacha have a great evolving dynamic of a defensive person reluctant to reveal their softer side and the tough friend who teases it out, and Yzma's frustration with the confidently stupid Kronk is hilarious to watch.
As for the cultural framing, it's not really done with enough earnestness to critique it. The blatant pieces of modern culture in the Inca setting work far better than the similar jokes in Hercules because that film felt like it still cared about doing Ancient Greece a little seriously, but this film openly uses its setting more as pure flavor. Certainly, there doesn't seem to be any harmful usage of the setting, and I think it would be hard to be upset by it because the film isn't placing itself as a cultural showcase.
This is a great cartoon movie that leaned into postmodern irony in an interesting and successful avoidance of tonal discord from preceding nineties Disney cinema. It may have been a troubled production, but the product is an incredibly lovable film.