The Emperor’s New Groove runs 78 minutes. That is the whole movie, and it is why the movie works. Disney’s 2000 animated comedy about an Incan emperor turned into a llama moves fast, wastes nothing, and never asks you to sit still for a ballad about destiny. Mark Dindal directed. David Reynolds wrote it, from a story by Dindal and Chris Williams.
Trailer, via YouTube Movies.
Kuzco Fires Yzma Before She Can Fire Him
Emperor Kuzco is spoiled and conceited, and on the day before his 18th birthday he announces he will demolish a nearby village to build a summer home. Village leader Pacha objects. Kuzco dismisses him. Kuzco also learns his elderly advisor and alchemist Yzma has been usurping his duties, and fires her.
Yzma and her sidekick Kronk plot to poison Kuzco’s wine before news of her termination goes public. Kronk grabs the wrong vial from her secret laboratory. Kuzco becomes a llama instead of a corpse.
Yzma orders Kronk to take him outside the city and kill him. Kronk’s conscience and a run of mishaps drop the sack onto Pacha’s cart. Kuzco wakes in Pacha’s backyard with part of his memory gone.
Spade, Goodman, Kitt and Warburton Carry the Voices
The cast does the heavy lifting. David Spade voices Kuzco as a brat with perfect timing. John Goodman gives Pacha a patience that never turns sappy. Eartha Kitt plays Yzma with real menace under the jokes. Patrick Warburton’s Kronk is the film’s best engine.
- Kuzco, voiced by David Spade
- Pacha, voiced by John Goodman
- Yzma, voiced by Eartha Kitt
- Kronk, voiced by Patrick Warburton
- Chicha, voiced by Wendie Malick
Wendie Malick rounds out the main voices as Chicha. Kellyann Kelso voices Chaca, Eli Russell Linnetz voices Tipo.
A Collapsing Bridge, Crocodiles, a Crumbling Cliff
Kuzco agrees to move the construction site if Pacha takes him home. On the road he tries to renege. They fight on a collapsing bridge, then have to work together to escape crocodiles and a crumbling cliff face. Yzma learns Kronk lost the emperor, and the two set out after him.
This is where the film’s shape shows. It is a chase comedy, not a musical epic, and every set piece exists to force two characters who dislike each other into cooperation. The bridge and the crocodiles are not decoration. They are the argument.
The Film Began as Kingdom of the Sun
Development started in 1994 as a musical epic called Kingdom of the Sun. Roger Allers, coming off The Lion King, brought in Sting to write songs. Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame had underperformed at the box office, so Dindal came aboard as co-director to push the film toward comedy.
Poor test screenings, creative differences with Dindal, and a schedule falling behind ended with Allers leaving. The film became a lighthearted comedy in the vein of a Chuck Jones cartoon. That history is visible in the finished product, and it is a feature, not a scar.
The Numbers
- Release year: 2000
- Runtime: 78 minutes
- Director: Mark Dindal
- Writers: David Reynolds, Mark Dindal, Chris Williams
- Genres: Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy
- Metacritic: 70/100
What the 78 Minutes Buy
The Emperor’s New Groove does not have the sweep of the Disney films it was supposed to resemble, and it does not want one. Its tagline, “It’s all about… ME!”, tells you the register. This is a comedy about a selfish kid learning the minimum required decency, delivered in the time it takes to watch two episodes of television.
The trade is real. A film this short cannot build the emotional weight of a musical epic, and it does not try. What it gets instead is density. There is no filler song, no dead stretch, no scene that exists to justify a soundtrack. Yzma and Kronk are the proof: two villains written purely for laughs who land harder than most Disney antagonists with a full ballad behind them.
Where it sits against the studio’s earlier 1990s run is the interesting question. The Emperor’s New Groove is the movie Disney made after the epic formula stopped paying off, and it is better than several of the films that formula produced. The production chaos that killed Kingdom of the Sun produced something leaner and stranger.
The weakness is stakes. Kuzco’s arc is small, the empire barely registers as a place, and the ending resolves exactly the way the first act promises. Nothing here surprises you after the poisoning goes wrong.
That is a fair price for a film that never wastes your time. The Emperor’s New Groove is not a great Disney movie. It is a very good 78-minute one, and that is rarer than it sounds.
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