The Emperor's New Groove (2000) David Spade, John Goodman, Patrick Warburton, Wendie Malick Movie Review

The Emperor's New Groove (2000)   3/53/53/53/53/5


The Emperor's New Groove (2000)

A Grown Up Groove

Every since he was born Emperor Kuzco has been spoilt and now grown up he is arrogant, self centred and has no time or respect for the people in his kingdom. There is but one fly in the ointment and that is administrator Yzma who along with her henchman Kronk plan to do away with Kuzco by poisoning him. Except he ends up turned into a Llama and whilst Yzma still wants him dead he ends up escaping and on the trailer of Pacha whose home Kuzco had planned to demolish to build a personal water park. Now Pacha has the upper hand and will help Kuzco return to his former self as long as he promises not to destroy his home.

As a reviewer it is often hard trying to be fair when reviewing a movie made for a young audience, you can end up unjustly criticising it for various issues which won't be apparent to its intended young audience. It makes me wonder whether the pen pushers at Walt Disney decided to address these criticisms when making "The Emperor's New Groove" because when I say the humour is more adult I mean that the jokes are going to fly over a lot of young children's heads whilst working for adults who find themselves watching it. It gets to the point that "The Emperor's New Groove" feels like Disney trying to make an animation for those who grew up on their animations but now find the current animations failing to offer them what they now need.

But that ironically presents us with a different problem as whilst the humour and actors voicing them work for grownups with David Spade delivering his own style to the character of Kuzco I don't believe it works that well for children. Oh there are plenty of visual gags but a lot of them have an adult slant which I am convinced won't work for children.

What this all boils down to is that I admittedly enjoyed "The Emperor's New Groove" with the more grown up humour which fills it. But it makes it less of a movie for children but more a movie for teenagers and grown ups who had grown up watching Disney animations.


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