If it doesn’t fully succeed in its goal, it still produces enough witty narration and snappy repartee to keep audiences comfortably occupied.
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I suspect the Disney folk were as surprised as anyone at the phenomenal success of 1992´s animated feature, "Aladdin," among adults as well as children, thanks largely to the hip vocal talents of Robin Williams as the genie of the lamp. It must not have taken them long to recognize that they might duplicate that accomplishment with a whole movie devoted to hip, cool, smart dialogue and characters. Thus, no doubt, was born the idea for "The Emperor´s New Groove," a 2000 animated feature, a movie four years in the making that tries to one-up its 1992 progenitor in the "with-it" category. If it doesn´t fully succeed in its goal, it still produces enough witty narration and snappy repartee to keep audiences comfortably occupied for seventy-seven minutes.
"The Emperor´s New Groove" tells the story of a llama. A llama named Kuzco. Or an emperor named Kuzco, if I´m not confusing you. You see, they´re one and the same. The llama used to be a human, an eighteen-year-old, pre-Columbian, Mesoamerican king whose groove was thrown out of whack early on. He got on the wrong side of his advisor, an evil crone and part-time sorceress named Yzma ("Proof that dinosaurs once roamed the Earth"), who turned him into the fleecy creature we meet at the beginning of the picture. Fortunately, Kuzco can still talk (and talk and talk), so he narrates the tale of how he came to be in his frightful condition.
Yzma´s dimwitted flunky, Kronk, was supposed to have given Kuzco a deadly poison, but he goofed and gave the emperor a llama potion, instead. Then Kuzco got away before Kronk could do anything about it. When Yzma found out what happened, she was determined to find Kuzco the llama before he could talk to anyone. But in a rather involved plot complication, Kuzco wound up in the middle of the jungle far from the palace, with only a peasant, Pacha, to help him get back to his rightful throne. The story is about Kuzco and Pacha trying to return to the palace before Yzma and Kronk can knock them off.
Kuzco is played by the voice talent of David Spade, whose dialogue alternates between clever and funny and syrupy and annoying. When he´s in the former mode, the movie zips along; when he turns all gushy as typical Disney animated characters are wont to do, things slow down considerably. Kuzco´s major problem, however, is even more disturbing for the audience; namely, he´s almost totally unlikable. He´s a conceited, self-absorbed jerk, a selfish brat, traits we can see at the outset are going to be involved with the movie´s ultimate moral but don´t help us much while getting there. Yes, of course, it´s about the emperor learning to be more humble, more giving, and, yes, of course, he learns his lesson. This is Disney, after all.
Still, Kuzco is so unsympathetic most of the time, the film doesn´t afford us anyone to root for except Pacha, played in unusually understated fashion by John Goodman. Pacha the peasant is kind, generous, and caring, everything Kuzco isn´t. Pacha is also dull and mostly boring. Which brings us to the villains, Yzma and Kronk, who constantly upstage their protagonist cousins. Yzma is played brilliantly by Eartha Kitt, who shamelessly steals every scene she´s in by chewing up the microphone. Thank heaven for her energy because the others have to rely solely on the script for their presence to be noticed. Kronk, played by Patrick Warburton, is a fairly typical big, dumb, cartoonish helper.
The best parts of the film are its appearance, its energy, and its continual high spirits. It´s one of Disney's better-looking animations, not quite equaling "Tarzan" in overall beauty but doing a good job filling the screen with luminosity and invention, particularly the palace scenes and the mountaintop settings. The script, and Ms. Kitt, maintain a high kinetic level, with jokes, attempted jokes, and visual gags coming fast. Pacha´s rescue of Kuzco from a pack of panthers is an exhilarating sequence, and a scene in a jungle restaurant is fairly funny.
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[release]6962[/release]