Disney - tongue in cheek

Rating: 9/10 (14 June 2003)

Who would have thought the writers at Disney would ever come up with enough courage to do a whole movie that takes the genre and smashes it over the heads of everybody who expected to see an old-fashioned musical?
This film is about as funny as a Douglas Adams novel - it's full of self-irony and you get the suspicion that some of it is a bit mean-spirited, but enjoying it means laughing your belly out and you just have to show it to all your friends. It's stuffed with tongue-in-cheek dialogue (I L O V E the scene, in which Yzma and Kronk discuss whether to get rid of Kuzco before or after dinner - look for it in the quotes on this site!) and incredibly fast and funny animation with a sense of irreverence that not even Disney's "Hercules" was ready to deliver.
Seems to have been written by some talented teenagers on an overdose of Monty Python, Jim Carrey and "Futurama". Thanks of course go to Robin Williams for leading the way with his unforgettable portrayal of a certain blue genie. He should probably be awarded a special Oscar for every new film Disney chunks out in memory of that performance with a great cast like this!
And one last thing: Kronk definitely is the greatest stupid henchman in recent memory. He's so unknowingly dead-pan, you have to wonder if he's not actually the most mature of the characters on screen. 9/10