Bad Llama!

It’s important to recognize that a film that fails at the Box Office isn’t always a failure of a film. Disney had big plans for The Emperor’s New Groove, back when it was originally titled Kingdom of the Sun and was supposed to be a much more dramatic animated film in the vein of their other “Disney Renaissance” works. They tapped Sting to write the music for the film, they had the director of their biggest hit yet, The Lion King, tapped to make the film. It was set up to be yet another artistic marvel from the studio that, at that point, had produced nothing but a string of winners dating back to 1989’s The Little Mermaid. There was no way Kingdom of the Sun could fail.

But a long and troubled production dragged the film down, and constant retooling, along with concerns about production costs (especially after both Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame underperformed at the Box Office), gave the studio heads cold feet and they demanded changes. Sting removed most of his music from the work. Allers left the production. Eventually the film morphed, changing from a dramatic animated film into an amusing animated farce, headlined by David Spade and John Goodman. It was a failure at the Box Office, making only $169 Mil against its $100 Mil budget. The rechristened The Emperor’s New Groove had failed to set the world on fire.

Thing is, audiences might not have liked it at the time but the film is actually great. While audiences didn’t like it at the time, instead preferring to go see Dreamworks’ The Road to El Dorado instead, critics were fans of the movie. They called it “slapstick fun”, and even Roger Ebert awarded it three (out of four) stars. Over the years fans found the movie, calling it one of Disney’s better comedies. Even the studio eventually came around to it, granting the movie not just a direct-to-video sequel, Kronk’s New Groove, but also an animated series, The Emperor’s New School. It wasn’t a smash success but the film did eventually find its own following.

So why did the film fail? Well, it’s not a Disney film in the vein of what people at the time were used to. While there were comedic moments in The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and the rest of the Disney Renaissance, those are all still sweeping romances and adventures, films with heart and soul. By comparison, The Emperor’s New Groove is a silly little film, a very cartoony, slapstick affair where sarcastic jokes and wacky antics await around every corner. For fans of the animated films Disney had been kicking out at the time, this didn’t feel like a very Disney movie. Audiences rebelled, and the film failed.

But going back and watching it now, the film really does hold up well. Yes, it’s silly and strange, but that’s all part of its charm. It wastes no time getting into its story, letting the jokes fly freely, and it shows within the very first scene of the movie that it has no interest in being just another Disney movie. So sweeping musical numbers, no heroines striving to be free, to live in a world outside their own. The Emperor’s New Groove dances (at times quite literally) to its own drum beat and is all the better for it.

The film is all about Emperor Kuzco (David Spade), an entitled, spoiled little shit of a man, who has had everything in his amazing life handed to him as he is the God King of the Incan Empire. He has everything, and he wants more, like a new summer home on a resplendent hill out in the countryside. A hill, it should be noted that village leader Pacha (John Goodman) lives on. The hill has been his family’s property for multiple generations. It’s their home. Kuzco wants it, though, so that’s that. Pacha and his family will have to move.

After making this declaration, Kuzco sits down for dinner with Yzma (Eartha Kitt), his elderly advisor who, frankly, wants more power for herself than she should have. Kuzco has already tried to fire her once, so in retaliation Yzma has him poisoned over dinner. Except her goofus assistant, Kronk (Patrick Warburton), uses the wrong potion and turns Kuzco into a llama. A walking, talking, sarcastic llama. Kuzco escapes the palace and ends up with Pacha, the man he just screwed over earlier. With Pacha’s help Kuzco might just be able to get back home and find a potion to cure himself. That is, if he’s willing to learn a little something along the way…

The basic outline of The Emperor’s New Groove’s story really isn’t all that shocking. It’s a standard fantasy story, with an obnoxious hero who is brought low before he has to learn some lessons and become a better person by the time he gets home. That’s the exact arc that Kuzco goes through, start to finish, and in a different film that treated that material more seriously it would feel staid and boring, kind of like an inverse Aladdin with the diamond in the rough being the rich and powerful Emperor all along, he just had to realize it. That doesn’t seem at all special when you put it that way. “Goodness was in you all along,” is a basic Disney morality lesson.

Why the film works is because of all the humor. The movie goes for broke at every turn, putting in funny setpieces and slapstick humor whenever possible. There are scenes of humorous carnage in the film that hearken back to the days of classic Disney cartoons, with protagonists getting thrown around, beaten up, falling to their dooms, and picking themselves back up after. The Emperor’s New Groove taps into that energy for Kuzco and Pacha’s journey back to the palace, making for a lively series of scenes all the way along.

This is aided by the vocal talents in the cast. While I’m not always a fan of David Spade’s humor, I do find his performance as Kuzco to be a real treat. His jokes, his humor, and I have to think his improvisation, led to a character that delivers hilarious lines every few seconds, all while somehow being someone you actually enjoy watching (despite the character being a shitheel). Patrick Warburton also gets a lot of hilarious time as Kronk, playing a big, silly doofus to absolute perfection. These two make the movie what it is, a delightful, hilarious treat.

I get why audiences didn’t like this film at the time. It wasn’t what they were expecting. But the simple fact is that The Emperor’s New Groove had its own vibe, its own style, and it worked in context. It just took time for audiences to find and respect the film. Now, it has its own cult following, a dedicated fanbase that loves the film for all it is and all it could have been. It’s not the sweeping epic that Allers and Sting wanted and, in a way, I think that makes it even better. We’d had enough of the staid Disney films of the period. It was time for something new. The Emperor’s New Groove delivered that.

If anything, the film was just too far ahead of its time. Other studios were getting into the animation game, making films that felt like they went against the Disney grain, like Shrek, and if this film had come out a little later maybe it would have been the hit Disney expected. The film (eventually) knew what it wanted to be, even if audiences didn’t know what to do with it at the time.