Tuesday, October 25, 2016

The Emperor's New Groove

Our movie opens with a talking llama who is clearly miserable and unhappy, lost in a jungle and drenched by unremitting rain.  The llama proves to be Kuzco (David Spade), Emperor of the Incas.  It turns out that Kuzco was transformed into a llama by Yzma (Ertha Kitt), an advisor whom he unceremoniously fired.  Though Yzma had intended Kuzco’s death, her goofy minion Kronk (Patrick Warburton) blundered and allowed an unconscious and transformed Kuzco to escape.  Kuzco awoke to find himself in the care of Pacha (John Goodman) and blamed him for his transformation.  That makes no sense based on the fact that Kuzco is our narrator and has already narrated the part where he was transformed by Yzma.  Anyway, Pacha finds himself torn on what to do.  The emperor had declared his intention to demolish Pacha’s village in order to build a summer palace.  Even though Kuzco refuses to negotiate the fate of Pacha’s village, Pacha agrees to lead the emperor back to the capitol in search of a cure.
 
The movie is generally fun, filled with action, humor, and male bonding.  However, it has too many anachronistic aspects.  At one point, Kuzco and Pacha stop at a diner – complete with menus and salt shakers – and there’s a scene of a put-upon short-order cook.  Also, it turns out that Kronk was in the Boy Scouts, or an Incan equivalent with similar uniforms.  When Kuzco is an unconscious llama, he falls into Pacha’s wagon to escape Kronk.  The problem here is that Incans didn’t have the wheel, and therefore would have no wagons.  Nor did they have glass, so all those vials of potions in Izma’s lab should be clay instead.  Oh, and cork is from Europe and Africa, so the vials shouldn’t have corks.  These repeated and plentiful anachronisms ruined an opportunity to get immersed in Incan culture.
 
Though this movie arrived in theaters in 2000, I didn’t get around to seeing it until last week (September 2015).  Sorry about the delay in my review.

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