A new direction for Disney?

Rating: Null/10 (11 December 2000)

I was lucky enough to snatch a couple of tickets to a sneak preview to this movie in Toronto on December 11. Actually, "snatching" might be a little too strong a word--although I *did* take the time to go to the cinema and buy advance tickets, the theatre was not even half full.
Too bad for those who missed it, I guess, because The Emperor's New Groove is a pretty good film. In my opinion, it marks a stark departure from previous Disney movies, not only because of its release date, but also because of its style, which includes only two very low-key songs and is a continuous sequence of sketches that might have well been taken out of Saturday Night Live (of the old type, of course).
The lack of a significant budget and clear direction--which shows not only in the quality of the art (still splendid and yet a little lower than one would expect from a Disney movie), but also in the fact that the script seems to have gone through a lot of change--make me wonder if this represents a new direction in which Disney movies are going: a sort of "experiment" that moves away significantly from the classic Disney pieces, which--it seems to me--have followed the same routing all the way up from Snow White.
Hopefully, this movie will demonstrate that it is possible to hold an audience captive with an animated movie even if it's not a musical and be successful enough for Disney to continue on this path with more "experiments"!