The Emperors New Groove busted into movie theaters in 2000 earning $89 million on a $100 million budget... a loser after a long string of profitable animated features stretching back to 1991's Beauty and the Beast (well Fantasia 2000 also lost money, but it was its own kind of animal). Also, many people argue about when the Disney 90's Golden Era ended. Some say after the Lion King, others argue that it stretched all the way through Tarzan, but most would agree, New Groove lands after that era. One of the reasons for that is that New Groove marked the split from the successful Disney musical.

The Emperors New Groove was originally conceived as a musical, South American take on the Prince and the Pauper titled Kingdom of the Sun. Much like Elton John did for The Lion King and Phil Collins did for Tarzan, Sting was going to write songs for the movie, but that version of the film never came together and the whole project was nearly scrapped. In the end, Sting wrote the closing credits song My Funny Friend and Me, and the movie became a buddy comedy. This turned out to be one of those instances where Disney was the copycat as The Road to El Dorado, a similarly themed Dreamworks movie had been released 9 months prior - though I do not know which went into production first. Anyways, El Dorado was also a box office disappointment. After New Groove came a trio of Sci-Fi themed movies, Atlantis, Lilo and Stitch, and Treasure Planet, all which lacked the hallmark Disney musical aspect.

Well, that was a lot of background, but the truth is, New Groove may be overlooked for being atypical. It really is kinda funny and unique. I would easily rank it above other non-classics like The Great Mouse Detective, The Sword in the Stone, or Aristocats. The whole story revolves around an evil sorceress who wants to kill the king, but her henchman (more bumbling than evil) Kronk keeps fouling things up, for example, he turns him into a llama instead of killing him. It stars David Spade, perfect for the sarcastic tone of the film, as the selfish king Kuzco turned llama, John Goodman as the common man Pacha, and Patrick Warburton as the bumbling Kronk who steals the show. There is one scene in which Kronk goes to order some food at a restaurant, and through a series of events jumps in during lunch rush and serves out orders like a pro. He is also adept at speaking squirrel. Kuzco and Pacha start off as adversaries but as you would expect, end up as friends.

Anyways, the movie is vibrant and manic, but ultimately a little to predictable in plot in spite of a fresh style of humor. The Emperors New Groove may not be remembered as a classic, but it shouldn't be totally forgotten. B-

"The Emperor's New Groove" is the funniest Disney movie along with "Aladdin". The characters are very charismatic, even the bad ones, the story is original, the animation is good, the voices are great, there are no Disney clichés to which we have grown so accustomed to during the 90s. You should definetly check out this movie. It diserves a 9/10, but in Keyframe's system I give it the perfect score of 4 stars.

This is one of the funniest movies we have, and it's up there with Johnny English, a horribly under-rated movie, in the most viewed in our family. When we saws the trailer, for some reason, it said PG-13, and we thought it looked really dumb. Then, on Christmas, a present from
our relatives was Emperor's New Groove. We were all like, "Um...uh...great...". Then we actually watched it. We were blown away. There was absolutely nothing repulsive about it. Kronk and his shoulder angel/demon are probably the most quoted among my family.

Great film!!!

I remember when my cousins insisted I saw this movie and I refused at first thinking "how can this be any good ?" because the plot was nothing like a regular feature disney movie,it whould probably be nothing more then a few jokes and a some musical numbers and nothing entertaining. I must admit,I was entirely wrong, its the first time I saw a Disney movie that went for straight comedy, and they did it so well. There was rarely moment in the film when I wasn't laughing. Probably the only let down was that unlike most Disney feature length animated films, the characters really didn't have that much depth to them, something that made there films into classics. Depsite that flaw, I highly reccomend it.

I love this movie. It's one of my favorites. There is loads of humor, the cast is excellent, and the animation is great. I think this is one of the last great movies that Disney has made. The characters have depth and there is real emotion in this movie. Although it is mostly a lighthearted comedy, it does have a few serious moments.
It's not the typical Disney movie either. In this the hero isn't the typical outcast goodguy, but rather a selfish stuck up snob who doesn't care about the little people. When he fires his advisor, Yzma, she is determined to kill him, but Kronk, her sidekick, messes it up and turns him into a llamma. The movie then continues to follow Kuzco who accidently gets taken away by Pacha to his village. Kuzco demmands Pacha take him back to the palace so he can turn back into his old self. They have many zany adventures along the way, and in the end Kuzco realizes that the little people are important too.
If you haven't seen this movie, rent it.

At the time Empeor's New Groove came out I was working weekends in a video store, and I remember that over the late 90's Disney animated features seemed to blur into one another. In hindsight this isn't surprising. It's odd to think that during the 1960's and 1970's Disney released only 3 animated features per decade, but by 2000, Emperor's New Groove was their seventh since 'Lion King'. Could I perhaps be accused of being Disneyed-out by 2000? There doesn't seem to be any real relationship between quantity and quality at Disney, since their other frenetic period was the 1940's. In fact they churned out 'Pinocchio', 'Fantasia', 'Dumbo' and 'Bambi'in the space of two and half years. Would I have gone "Not another Disney movie" when Bambi came out?

What has this to do with the review. Probably nothing, except that perhaps by 2000 a Disney feature had to work against a bit more inertia to get me as interested as it would have done in 1990.

Perhaps that's why I found Emperor's New Groove to be enjoyable, well-made, worth watching again... no serious faults other than the fact it wasn't anything about it that really made it stand out from their post-Pocahontas avalanche. Except perhaps for the fact, as noted below, that it's hard to find a major character whose both likeable and halfway intelligent. I'm all for flawed characters (a good example of an unbearably unflawed character being Mufasa from The Lion King), but with most of the characters in Emperor's New Groove, the flaws overwhelm everything else.

ENG is a straight-out comedy. There's that to it. And perhaps a guy turns in to a Llama (a damn ugly one) is an interesting thing to hang a movie on. It was a light, feel-good movie which hit most of its marks, without ever threatening to acquire classic status. The animation was of the quality one had come to assume from Disney by this point, even if it wasn't put to as breathtaking use as in Lion King (or Bambi for that matter).

A good Disney movie. Different. I'm curious as to who started work first: Disney on this one, or Dreamworks on 'Road to El Dorado'. Whatever the case, 2000 was a very Latin American year for cartoons.

a note: Emperor's New Groove was the first of several Disney animated features to lose money at the box office, and could perhaps be seen as the beginning of the end for Disney's traditional animation section.

This movie is fricken hillarious!

Some critics panned this wonderful movie. Others downplayed its greatness. Probably out of all the professional reviews I've read online, only one critic nailed it on the head and saw more to the movie than what most did. In my opinion, this is Disney's greatest achievement, nevermind what people say about Beauty and the Beast. It currently ranks number four on my top ten animated movies of all time, right below The Fox and the Hound, Bambi, and Lady and the Tramp.

The Emperor's New Groove is a brave departure from the Disney norm, with their saccharine sweet and by then already stale formulas. It is much more of a deviation than Atlantis: The Lost Empire or Lilo and Stitch and is far superior as entertainment than both combined. While it's true The Emperor's New Groove doesn't have anywhere near the amount of special effects or attention to depth seen in Atlantis or the wonderfully pleasing watercolor look and fluid animation seen in Lilo and Stitch, The Emperor's New Groove is probably closer to the spirit of cartoony and caricature animation than anything Disney's ever put out. It doesn't mean the animation is sketchy or not up to Disney's standards. It's just different. At any rate, there are still little touches that make the film beautiful, such as the part where Kuzco stands on a ridge and beams of sunlight stream past him or how the animators managed to disguise a 3D generated cart to look like a hand drawn one.

Tastes in animation and visual looks aside, it's really not fair to say this movie has a very thin plot or story. Yes the movie is very wacky and low on deep drama. It's a very lighthearted movie. It's probably safe to say that this is Disney's first and last full blown sitcom. While the humor is the movie's greatest strength, buried beneath the humor and the wackiness is a tidy little story with a very important message about the dangers of selfish thinking. And thankfully, this message doesn't get hammered into my head like the messages of some other Disney movies. Rather, the movie lets the characters do their own things.

Refreshingly, The Emperor's New Groove is a buddy movie of the highest caliber. While Disney has almost always had a knack for crafting strong characters that develop over the course of the movie, in the post-Mermaid Disney movies there always seemed to be something just a tiny bit formulaic about the way the characters developed and how the plot elements came together.

Silliness aside, The Emperor's New Groove seems to be a return to the old way of concentrating on the characters and the way they interact with each other. Heck. Maybe it's because of the silliness that this movie appears fresh when compared to the movies with the shopworn elements of having a hero with a dark past or having every princess pine for true love. Every single stereotype about what you think a Disney character should be like is thrown out the window in this movie. The villain in this movie is not just cackling and dressed in black. She's cackling, dressed in black, and extremely funny. And while the lead character of Kuzco starts out as a jerk, Pacha at times is no less as imperfect. Yet their relationship is interesting and twists and turns, and you just can't help but grow to love the both of them, so much so that despite the movie's lightweight appeal, you can't help but feel sympathetic when Kuzco realizes his mistakes or sit at the edge of your seat during the movie's climax, which unlike in the previous modern Disney movies, doesn't feel shoehorned in. And when I first saw Pacha's wife and the fact that she was pregnant and saw their seemingly normal and loving relationship with each other and their seemingly normal and very cute kids, I nearly felt like standing up and cheering. With not a sidekick or a dead parent in sight, I truly felt Disney had hit the nail right on the head with this movie.

Of course the humor is the real star of this movie. While in the classics like Bambi and Lady and the Tramp, the humor came naturally from the characters' personalities. It seems Disney will never return to this style of humor ever again. But the humor in this movie is also quite different from what you see in the other modern Disney movies. Instead of relying on pop culture references and tired, era-sensitive jokes, The Emperor's New Groove is a rapid fire barrage of situations, pratfalls, playing to the audience, and hyperactive gestures. Yet the charm of the characters is never sacrificed, and much of the humor comes from that too. Heck. Forget this movie just being humorous. The Emperor's New Groove thrives on a megaton of pure high voltage energy. The movie begins with one song and dance number, but it comes off as a poking fun of the overblown extravaganzas of the previous Disney movies. No other song or dance number appears in the movie, yet it still retains a high level of color and energy far surpassing Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast.

The movie has its flaws, naturally. Someone who wants a traditionally dramatic Disney movie should probably check out Mulan or The Lion King. And the movie loses a little steam during the part that amounts to little more than a nonsensical parade of animals. However The Emperor's New Groove still remains the most delirious fun I've ever had in a Disney movie, and it shouldn't be dismissed for what it is. And probably the best reason why this is Disney's greatest achievement lies in its legacy. During the movie's early stages, it was reported to become a dramatic, musical romance. Nearly a third of the movie was animated when none of it seemingly clicked. The creators were given free reign on creativity, and in two short weeks, they reworked it into this masterpiece.

Well, this has to be one of the funniest movies Disney came out with for a while (until Lilo and Stitch, anyway.)

That's about all it has going for it.

The film follows the Disney Studio's second-most-used plot formula: spoiled kid loses everything, builds some character, and returns to redeem himself.

The spoiled-brat emperor gets turned into a llama. He ends up travelling with a peasant who has no reason to like him, but helps him anyway. The peasant and his family are unfortunately quite boring.

The villain (who certainly had a point in turning to villainy!) and her muscle-bound sidekick are the most interesting characters in the film.

Perhaps the biggest weakness in the film is that, at the end...the brat emperor doesnt seem to have recognizably improved in character. Sure, he saves the peasant's home (from himself) but there's little evidence that his behavior has imprved toward anyone else. The villain gets cut no slack, although, as I said, there was some justification for her actions.

Still, a bit more plot and character work would have pulled this one off. One of the great 'might have beens.'

If you liked Mark Dindal's zany "Cats Don't Dance" you'll recognize some of the same kind of mayhem in his turn as director for "The Emperor's New Groove". That said, Emperor fails where Cats Don't Dance succeeded in that it has all the mayhem but none of the charm.

The film first lands itself in trouble with the characters. Our "hero" is the spoiled Emperor Kuzco--he's a real brat so of course we as the audience aren't exactly going to be cheering for him at the start. So who should we end up cheering for? Perhaps Pancha, the kind-hearted humble peasant--great family man, kinda loveable in a John Goodman-kind of way.. but he doesn't get enough screen time to really come to forefront.. and as Kuzco (who narrates the first two thirds of the movie) points out, this is suppose to be Kuzco's story. Then there's Yzma the "bad guy" who is not nearly as evil a villain as we've come to expect from Disney.. apart from wanting to knock off Kuzco, she's unbelievably tame. She even gives her manservant Kronk his way on many occasions--yes, what happened to the good ole days with Gaston thwacking around LeFou? So of all the main characters, who did I end up cheering for? Kronk. Because he was the most interesting "good guy" on the screen... but doesn't it seem a little weird story-wise to be cheering for the bad guy's sidekick??

I also got the feeling throughout the movie that this was a Saturday morning cartoon trying to fill the shoes of a motion picture. While being extremely funny, I kept getting the sense that it was not in its element on the big screen. Emperor also lands itself in trouble for being a little too cheeky and self-involved in places--to the point that you begin to forget exactly what the real plot of the movie is suppose to be.

Very funny--yes. Is it the latest must-see, pinnacle of animated feature films?--no. But check it out when it comes to video.. I suspect it'll fit more comfortably on the small screen.