The first time I watched The Emperor’s New Groove I was a kid and I absolutely adored it. As a fairly hyperactive child (I think my Mum would say very hyperactive) I used to act out the movie. When I re-watched it again recently I found that me getting older had not dampened how much I enjoyed the film. In a similar way to The Mummy, the films that you see in your childhood and adore stick with you, and you always seem to hold a small candle for them.
The plot, unsurprisingly, isn't complex. There is an Emperor who is quite self-absorbed. His ‘evil’ advisor Yzma is jealous of his power and plots to take it for herself after he fires her. With the help of her assistant Kronk she poisons Kuzco, but accidently turns him into a llama. Kuzco winds up in the home of a man whose village he plans to destroy to make way for his birthday present to himself. The man tries to help Kuzco get back to the palace and on the way Kuzco changes as a person and agrees to build his summer house somewhere else. It’s a fairly standard story of changing people through time but directed at kids.
Beyond telling you how much I liked it, and describing the plot, it’s difficult to know where to take this review now. The characters are not deep, profound or particularly interesting. The only change in any of them throughout the film is Kuzco’s personality. The animation is fairly average, and there’s not much, good or bad, to say about it. The characters are voiced fairly well. David Spade (8 Simple Rules, Rules of Engagement) voiced the Emperor, and does so very well. The interesting voice is Patrick Warburton. He voices Kronk, and has a very distinctive voice. When I started watching Family Guy I could not place the voice of Joe, until I realised that it was the same guy!
Anyway, I've decided to focus on the comedic side to the film. As with most animated children’s films there is a comedic element to the story. On the journey back to the palace Kuzco and Pacha get into a number of scrapes which provided great amusement to my childhood self, and reminiscent memories to my (only slightly) more mature self. The film is quite quotable and I’m fairly sure that my girlfriend (who has been watching more and more films with me lately) was utterly sick of me talking along to the characters as the memorable lines came out. The scene at the end of the film where Kuzco and Pacha are escaping from Yzma and trying to turn Kuzco back to a human is quite funny.
It’s difficult to identify exactly what I like most about The Emperor’s New Groove. It is definitely the kind of film that you can relax to, but I feel that if you haven’t seen it before then you will hate it. When I watched The Rock, I didn't see why my flatmates had hyped it up so much, but then I figured that they had seen it when they were younger, and so the memory of enjoying it once sticks with them. It’s the same with me and The Mummy, which one of my flatmates doesn't seem to enjoy as much as I do. I guess it is also the same with The Emperor’s New Groove. If you have kids and they are younger than eight I think they will love this film. However, if you are looking for a new film to watch one evening then I would avoid this. It is the memory of seeing it before that makes me enjoy it so much.
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