I think the thing that hurts this movie the most is its attempt at a "clever" story structure. Movie opens with a hint at great climax of the story... we then flash back further to 'earlier that day' where Kronk receives an urgent llama-gram from his Papi... this results in him recounting two other flashbacks... before returning to the first flashback... before leading us to the climax.

You follow all that? I'll admit, I barely did and I enjoy movies like Memento.

Also worth noting is that the opening song. While upbeat and bouncy, it is totally useless in its goal of establishing the movie's overall theme. I mean, compare Tom Jones singing "Perfect World" in the original New Groove with lyrics like 'he was born and raised to rule, no one has ever been this cool'. The song clearly tells you about who Kuzco is--or at least, who he thinks he is. Compare that to poor Kronk's song... I have no idea what that woman is saying! I actually turned on the subtitles at one point just to try and figure it out... okay, I get it, 'true to your groove'. If you're going to have a song that's stating the mission statement of the movie, at the very least make sure I can understand what it's about!

And yes, Kronk, while a loveable sidekick was really stretched here to carry the entire movie on his own. We loved him in the original New Groove because his total innocence was a wonderful counterpoint to Yzma's manical objectives. On his own though, Kronk just doesn't pack the same punch.

The entire 'true to your groove' theme was perfectly addressed in Kronk's portion of the epilogue of the original movie. Unfortunately, Kronk's New Groove takes that small catchy moment, throws in ten times more complexity than is really necessary, to ultimately get us right back where we originally started from. If there was ever a definition of a largely pointless exercise, that would be mine.

Oh, dear. Eschewing Kuzco in favour of Kronk was risky, but it did work in Lion King 1.5 after all for Timon and Pumba. Unfortunately Kronk isn't a very interesting character, and although about the first third of the movie works pretty well (even if it reminds me of 'Coccoon'), there is an eventually pointless reintroduction of Yzma (who looks terribly like Cruella), and an even more pointless middle half of the film which deviates into a half hour flashback which is desperately cobbled together with the rest of the film. One of Disney's worst recent DTV's, though not as bad as the abominable 'Milo's Return'. At least the animation is reasonable.

I'm not even going to bother explaining the plot, because I don't really think it has one. It was like they had three different 25 minute segments and jammed them together hoping they'd make sense. Forget it.

Kronk's New Groove isn't bad nor is it great. It's somewhere in between, but it is one of Disney's better direct-to-video releases.

The story is ok, a little slow in places, but still enjoyable. There were several movies spoofed in it, such as Lord of the Rings, and there were some pretty funny scenes. My favorite was when Kronk described Ms. Birdwell. Most of the characters from the original were in it, even if they had very minor roles. Kuzco was the only character that didn't seem to fit in the film very well. Like the first film he stops the movie and says stuff in between, but in this one he comes off more annoying than funny. It's almost like the writers didn't know what to do with him. The new characters were ok, and amazingly I didn't find any of them annoying. Kronk's "girl of his dreams" was great. The original voice cast returned which made me happy. So it get's points for that.

The animation was ok, better than most dtv's but not theater quality. The score is pretty good, there's even a homage to the Lion King slipped in there which I found most amusing. There are a few songs, most of which I didn't care for all that much as they were just plain bad or didn't seem to fit in.

Overall I think this film is worth a rent, but I don't think I'd buy it. It's definitely not as good as the original, but then again sequals rarely are.

Hm, better than I thought.
THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE was a great movie, one of Disney's best animated features ever. Clever, witty, hilarious. KRONK'S NEW GROOVE is none of these but still enjoyable. The animation doesn't look like a throw-away DTV which isn't that much a way to rate this movie since the first part itself wasn't that blessed with top-notch animation. But it has done it thing right and the sequel does the same. I especially liked the way Ms. Birdwell moves, she's perfect for an animator. And the disco number with her and Kronk is my favourite scene.
What I didn't liked was that the movie needs some time to get really started. In many ways, this flick feels like ATLANTIS: MILO'S RETURN: thrown together by various episodes of a TV Show that will never be shown. The first "episode" is about Yzma's return (btw, she and Kuzco are the only characters where it's visible that they were not drawn by the original animators) and features a really bad musical number. But the second part about Kronk finding the love of his life and trying to convince his father that he has a wife, kids and a house on a hilltop is charming. Charming in a low-key sense but charming nontheless. KRONK'S NEW GROOVE is one of Disney's better DTV sequels.