Don't go by the title. This Disney animated feature is one of the studio's wittiest.
It breaks new ground, too, stylistically: laid-back in tone, precisely calibrated in effect, commenting on the film itself - even doing an action replay in a revisionist, post-modern, wiseass, cool-dude take on events. Its draughtsmanship is sophisticated. The characters are spiky and sharp-angled. It confirms the growing contribution of the artists in Disney's Paris studio in bringing a youthful dexterity to the old California hands - as they did in Tarzan.
The freestyle gags, anything-goes humour and city-slicker animation have Tex Avery and Chuck Jones in mind, though the story
outline still conforms to Disney's didactic fables. A supercilious and autocratic young ruler (voiced by David Spade) in an Inca kingdom, used to passing capital sentence on anyone who throws him out of his "groove", or pampered lifestyle, gets turned into a laconically self-pitying llama by his ambitious stepmother (Eartha Kitt). He only regains his throne (and human shape) with the help of a good-hearted peasant hulk (John Goodman) after the pair have a plethora of athletic adventures in the jungle involving rope bridges and cliff-edges.
Nothing unfamiliar, but the freshness lies in the cartoonists' brilliantly restless line and the snap, zip and hip of one-liners provided by Roger Allers (Aladdin) and David Reynolds (A Bug's Life). Mark Dindal directs a hugely talented cosmopolitan team. Too good to waste on children only.
The Emperor's New Groove
Cert: certU
