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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 11, 2001)
How ‘Emperor’ got Disney’s groove back ■This instant classic contains neither a love interest nor cheesy musical numbers MOVIE REVIEW ‘The Emperor’s New Groove’ Disney ★★★★★ By Mason West Oregon Daily Emerald Think of all the stereotypes asso ciated with animated Disney films. Got it? Now take that, pick out the happy ending and throw the rest away. This is what the makers of “The Emperor’s New Groove” have done, and they ended up giving Dis ney a whole new groove as well. In this story — which has nothing to do with the children’s story “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” by the way — Emperor Kuzco (David Spade) is a heartless jerk who is only concerned with himself. After summoning a peasant, Pacha (John Goodman), to his palace, the emper or informs Pacha that his pleasant village will be demolished to make way for the greedy ruler’s summer home — Kuzcotopia, which comes complete with a water slide. In the meantime, Kuzco’s adviser, Yzma (Eartha Kitt), is planning to kill him and usurp his power. But instead her servant, Kronk, (Patrick Warbur ton) mixes the poison chosen to kill Kuzco with a different potion and turns Kuzco into — guess what? — a llama. Through ironic coincidence, lla ma Kuzco ends up depending on Pacha to return him to the palace and change him back to normal. But Pacha won’t help the poor emperor unless he scraps his plan to destroy the pleasant village. All these things ultimately get resolved in the trade mark happy ending, but the actions that lead to the predictable end are refreshingly new and the funniest thing since Election 2000. First, this isn’t a Disney musi cal. “Tarzan” took a big step away from the tradition of having songs for no reason, but “New Groove” takes it even further. The only “song” in the movie is sung by Tom Jones, the emperor’s “theme song guy.” Secondly, there is no romantic interest in the film. Pacha is happi ly married with kids — who turn out to be insanely funny — but Kuzco has no feminine counter part. The makers of the film bla tantly point out their divergence from the norm in a scene where Kuzco rejects all of his potential brides. Instead of being lovey dovey, the film wonderfully cap tures the tension of two guys alone in numerous scenes between Spade and Goodman. Just because this is a movie doesn’t mean that everybody always needs the right thing to say. The sometimes awk ward dialogue seems very real... if you believe in talking llamas. The third thing that gives “New Groove” a new groove is that it com pletely indulges itself in absurdity. Disney has always dealt with some mythic or magical elements in its animated films that are impossible in reality, but this film goes just plain bonkers. It is full of physical comedy — think Wile E. Coyote or an animated version of the Three Stooges. It fully adopts the rules of the animated universe: There aren’t any. This allows characters to fall off many high peaks and defy any es tablished laws of physics. The film is about a talking llama, for Pete’s sake. All four main actors play their parts with calculated perfection, and the animators have amazingly Forrester continued from page 6B love interest at his new private school. Abraham plays Wallace’s ego tistical writing professor. Unfortu nately, these actors didn’t need to waste their time with this movie. The characters aren’t written with enough depth to take advantage of their skills as actors and would have been fine with people who wouldn’t have raised the budget much. Neither character is more than a two-dimen sional device for the plot. This is a movie about Forrester and the kid who finds him, and it shows. Still, there are some amusing cameos by Busta Rhymes and an actor who should remain secret to maintain that “He’s-in-this-movie?” effect. Outside the story, the film is very aesthetically pleasing, providing rich variations in color and beautiful shots at almost every cut. The director of photography, Harris Savides, has won awards for music videos he has done, including Madonna’s “Rain” and Fiona Apple’s “Criminal.” Cer tain shots are repeated to show the monotony of life in the slums and for the audience to identify with the small geographic area in which the film takes place. The music to the film is largely pre-existing and stays with a jazzy theme that is oddly appropriate for the film. Tunes by Miles Davis carry the audience emotionally and al ways maintain a certain calm in the background. Also, the nature of jazz as an older style that never gets old serves to connect Jamal and For rester in a way beyond dialogue. Of course, it must be said that the dialogue for this movie was written by Portland native Mike Rich. Prior to writing this screenplay, Rich was a DJ for KGW and KINK-FM in Port land. He still lives there with his wife and family, but he now spends more time in front of a computer than a microphone. His script makes an enjoyable movie. It’s not going to change your view on the world. It’s not going to blow you away. But it will entertain you more than the average feel-good movie. Capcom continued from page 6B Fighters, but many fighters from the Alpha series of “Street Fighter” were excluded. SNK also leaves out some popular characters from the “King of Fighters” series, such as Joe Higashi and Andy Bogard. To be fair, games always have hidden characters that may satisfy disappointed fans, but they aren’t there to start, and the steps necessary to access such characters may be difficult. A feature unique to this game is the manner in which the characters are selected. When starting a match, the players choose how many “slots” they want available, from one to four. Each character in the game needs a certain amount of open slots to be se lected. The lowest characters need one, most need two and some need three. The four open slots would sug gest that there are characters who need all four open, adding to the like lihood of hidden characters. This feature is an interesting way to deal with the unevenness of battles, but it isn’t the right way to handle the prob lem. Within any one company’s ranks, most characters have a fight-, ing chance against any other, but the previously mentioned difficulties with the two companies’ fighting styles are a problem that won’t be solved with slots. Despite the faults of this game, it is a good thing that it was made be cause, as has been shown by the market, video games are expected to make sequels. Honestly, people never talk about the first “Street Fighter” game unless they are dis cussing why they have never seen it. So, while this game fails to meet the high expectations that were set out for it, we can hope that in the fu ture it will come back to us new and improved. , Courtesy Disney Enterprises, Inc. Top: Pacha (John Goodman) and llama Kuzco (David Spade) find themselves trapped in a crocodile-infested gorge. Left: Evil, ex-royal adviser Yzma (Eartha Kitt) speaks with her muscular manservant, Kronk (Patrick Warburton). captured the familiar aspects of the actors' personalities and physical at tributes in their animated counter parts. But regardless of the quality of all the characters, Warburton ab solutely steals the show. Warburton is better known for his role as Elaine’s sometimes boyfriend Puddy on “Seinfeld.” Every line that he or either of his figment advisers says will cause extreme laughter, sometimes so much laughter that the next bits of comedy could be missed in the time that it takes to stop. It may take two or three viewings to catch everything, and they will be well worth it. By the way, there is a scene when a bridge breaks and the viewer sees a shot of falling de bris. There are scattered letters in the debris — try to figure out what they say. There is no doubt that this is the funniest Disney film ever made, and it ranks up there with the funniest films I have ever seen. Missing this movie is ab solutely unacceptable, as it marks Disney’s unexpected but unques tioned return as king of the ani mated movie. THIS WE E K E N D ! 2 FRI.JAN. 12 ACOUSTIC SAM BOND’S SAT. JAN. 13 WITH SPECIAL GUEST CALEB KLAUDERcofcalobo) ELECTRIC TAVI ftD’C wwyv. ketoienedream.com 0098311 lohn Henry’sDance Nights 36 E. 11th, Eugene o T O Now serving o O full liquor bar. | '■ '
