Discovering The Emperor’s New Groove as a hung-over twenty something, with access to a limited number of channels, it always felt like an odd beast (not a llama).
It doesn’t quite have the same “classic” Walt Disney feel as the preceding Walt Disney Studios productions Fantasia 2000, Tarzan, or Mulan (yes, I am ignoring Dinosaur). It doesn’t fit with Disney’s post “Groove” groove either, feeling out of step with Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Lilo & Stitch, and Treasure Planet, although it probably feels more in common with Lilo & Stich than anything else.
Rewatching the film now, the animation may seem slightly flatter than most Disney animated films of the time but it’s dialogue and screwball comedy are far more effervescent than most of their offerings.
At least some of the reasons for its oddness become clear if you can seek out and watch The Sweatbox, the unreleased behind the scenes documentary on the making of the film by Trudie Styler, an essential companion to the film.
Granted access to the production thanks to her husband’s role creating music for the film, the musician Sting, The Sweatbox chronicles the development of another film with a scope far more in line with that of Disney’s “animated classics,” Kingdom of the Sun, and how it eventually morphed into New Groove.
Yay. I’m a Llama Again! Wait…
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With more than six songs planned by Sting, as opposed to the two we got, and an epic storyline featuring a plot to blot out the sun, a prince and the pauper style switch, romance, a more traditional Disney talking stone idol sidekick, and a prominent role for Owen Wilson as the mirror to David Spade’s character, almost all of these elements were whittled away resulting in the departure of its original director Roger Allers (The Lion King).
Not much remained apart from its Incan setting, an increasingly irritated Sting, David Spade as the vainglorious young Emperor Kuzco, who learns the error of his ways after being turned into a llama, and Eartha Kitt’s delicious advisor and villain Yzma.
The film ended up becoming a road trip buddy comedy with Spade’s Emperor making his way (as a llama) back to the city with John Goodman’s kind hearted villager Pacha, and one that still feels far more lunatic than most of the output of the Mouse House.
So, after 20 years, does it still hold up?
Bring It On.
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Despite an odd start (who would imagine Tom Jones animated counterpart as so diminutive and with a red afro hairdo?), when it works, it really works, mostly thanks to the unexpected bouts of weird humor in many parts of the film.
It’s peppered with out of nowhere gags like Yzma, pausing her evil monologuing to ask squeakily, “Is that my voice?”, after being transformed into a cute little cat by one of her potions, or a gag about the weird trope “travelling by map,” 11 years before The Muppets did it. The cast suffers through various attacks of Tex Avery style violence that can’t help but elicit laughs from their sheer unexpectedness.
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Despite the relatively flat backgrounds, the film delights in minor details elsewhere, like the fact that all the palace guards, acting as Kuzco’s backing dancers in the opening number, are all ever so slightly out of sync with each other.
We never even see Pacha and Kuzco pull the much ballyhooed lever, with the The Emperor’s New Groove deciding instead to jump straight to the punchline with remarkable economy.
Well, Ya Got Me. By All Accounts, It Doesn’t Make Sense.
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The film’s secret weapon is of course an ingredient added during its transformation from Kingdom of the Sun, Patrick Warburton’s muscle-bound Kronk.
An evolution of the affable meathead he’d played on Seinfeld, and go on to refine further in The Tick, Warburton’s loveable doofus gets most of the best, weirdest gags of the film and, along with Eartha Kitt, provides a double act to rival Spade’s Goodman.
The quick fire, yet absurd, repartee culminates in a dizzying scene at a curiously 1950’s style diner that serves giant pill bugs, as Kronk accidentally takes over the role of fry cook. As with everything he does, Kronk commits utterly to the task at hand, preparing and serving dishes while firing back what alterations he will and won’t permit to the menu, while Kuzco and Yzma keep changing their orders, all the while narrowly missing each other at the kitchen door.
The idiotic “shoulder angel” and devil of his conscience and of course his incredibly serious conversations with Bucky the squirrel (“Squeaky, uh, squeak, squeaker, squeakin…”) still raise a laugh.
Theatre of the Absurd
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The absurdity is baked into the core of movie, from a conveniently placed, misdelivered, giant trampoline that saves the villain by accident, to Kronk and Yzma’s genuinely baffled reaction as they try to figure out how on Earth they could have reached the the palace before, Kuzco and Pacha, who were very much in the lead.
New Groove might not have set the box office alight upon it’s release but it’s packed with weird little moments like these that grab your attention if you stumble upon it on TV, as I did, or reward rewatching on DVD, which a lot of people did, seeing as it was the best selling DVD of 2001. The 78 minute runtime also didn’t hurt repeat viewings.
We’ll never know how Roger Allers Kingdom of the Sun would have turned out, but The Emperor’s New Groove found a place in many children’s (and hung over twenty-something’s) hearts and gave us one of the most memeable moments in Disney history. Despite some 90’s sensibilities (what else explains the lead casting of David Spade), it still hold up as a great introduction to the more absurd side of comedy, 20 years later.
Pull the lever, Kronk!
The Emperor’s New Groove
Disney+
78 minutes
Director: Mark Dindal
Writers: Chris Williams, Mark Dindal, David Reynolds, Stephen J. Anderson, Don Hall, John Norton, Roger Allers, Matthew Jacobs, Doug Frankel, Mark Kennedy, and Mark Walton
Cast: David Spade, John Goodman, Eartha Kitt, Patrick Warburton, Wendie Malick, and Patti Deutsch
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