Once upon a time, in the far-off land of Burbank, California, there was an animation studio renown for its beautifully drawn family films, full of lighthearted humor, catchy songs, and memorable characters. As time went on the company would go through several loosely defined gold, silver, and bronze ages, before experiencing a creative renaissance in the late-eighties through early-nineties that earned the studio much critical acclaim and financial success.

By the end of the millennium, however, the studio found itself entering a slump as it tried to branch out from its popular Princess films and become more inclusive in its content, depicting stories from cultures outside of the traditionally European source. Some of these efforts were successful and liked (Mulan) while others were not (Pocahontas). On the whole this uncertainty of success made the executives in charge nervous, and they took a more active role in shaping each film to be as commercial appeasing as possible. Their effects on one such project can be seen in a difficult to find documentary called The Sweatbox, which details the transformation of an epic musical to be called Kingdom of the Sun into a more modest buddy road comedy known as The Emperor’s New Groove. According to the documentary no one was happy with how the movie was changed, and the film wound up being a financial disappointment upon release.

Which is a shame because it’s a great film.

The Emperor’s New Groove doesn’t feel like any Disney movie that’s come before. Instead it feels like a feature length Looney Tunes cartoon, full of snide humor, a wry self-awareness, and a low tolerance for sentimentality. The film hits many of the expected Disney beats and contains the requisite moral lesson, but the way its delivered almost makes it feel like a lampoon.

It all starts out normally enough; the camera finds a sad and panicked llama lost in the middle of the jungle when he gets caught in a sudden downpour. The pitiful-looking llama tries to stay dry, but his efforts are humiliatingly in vain. It’s a classic Disney moment of creating sympathy and empathy for a sad, childlike creature caught up in the frightening indifference of the world.

Then the narration starts, and it’s a shotgun blast to face of everything we’re supposed to know about Disney movies.

It is in this narration that we truly meet our protagonist, Kuzco, voiced by David Spade, which should tell you just about everything you need to know about him as a character. He’s a spoiled, self-obsessed, self-pitying, arrogant, sarcastic teenager in charge of an entire civilization and concerned only with serving his own whims. Yet we do get glimpses of humanity from Kuzco as the movie goes along, and for all his being a jackass (animal pun!) we can glean that he’s not beyond redemption. One of the most striking of these glimpses comes when we finally catch up to the opening scene of the film. Narrator Kuzco starts to repeat the same abrasive schtick from the start, demanding pity and claiming victimhood, when this interaction occurs.

Kuzco: Hey, give it a rest up there, will ya?

Narrator Kuzco: What? I’m just telling them what happened.

Kuzco: Who are you kidding, pal? They saw the whole thing. They know what happened.

Narrator Kuzco: Well, yeah, but… but…

Kuzco: Leave me alone.

It’s a bold moment that recasts the flashback structure not as a screenwriting structural trick, but as its own narrative of self-examination. Through all the snarky comments and fourth wall mayhem* Kuzco has been able to step back and observe himself objectively, and he doesn’t like what he’s seen.

Yet, as I mentioned, the film has a low tolerance for sentimentality, and while there are some genuine, heartfelt moments (the scene where Pacha can’t bring himself to tell his family their village is going to be destroyed is particularly moving) the movie manages to keep things from getting too mawkish by having a character, typically Kuzco, awkwardly back out of any moment that’s getting too “real.” It’s a smart, character-based way to keep things light and goofy without invalidating the sentiment.

These moments, however, are few and far between, because The Emperor’s New Groove is primarily a gag-driven movie, drawing on slapstick, wordplay, parody, meta humor, and just plain silliness. Kronk (voiced by Patrick Warburton), the dumb but good-hearted assistant to the film’s villain Yzma (Ertha Kitt), is often cited as a particularly quotable character, and Yzma’s dramatic transformation from “scary beyond all reason” old woman into adorable kitten for the film’s climactic fight/chase sequence is a pretty stellar example of the power of juxtaposition. (“Is that my voice? Is that MY VOICE?! Oh well.”)

Funny as the main cast are, however, it’s all the supporting characters who fully realize the madness of the film’s world. Most of the bit players have a “just go with it” attitude, not batting an eye at the strange and terrible things that are done and said. (Yzma’s dismissal of a starving farmer “You should have thought of that before you became peasants!” is met with a defeated “Oh.”) There’s a certain amount of ironic distance to everyone, and the best way I can think of to describe it is like they’re modeled after early Hollywood day players, where no matter what the character is supposed to be they all sound and act like New York transplants. (My favorite of these is a diner waitress [there’s a whole lot of little anachronisms like this sprinkled throughout the movie] who tosses off a bored “Mazel tov” before walking out of a scene.)

The Emperor’s New Groove was a significant departure for Disney, though it was very much in the wheelhouse of the film’s director Mark Dindal, whom you may remember from Cats Don’t Dance. Unfortunately the movie did not do well at the box office, though it did develop a pretty strong cult following and was eventually given a direct-to-video sequel (Kronk’s New Groove) and was spun off into a TV series (The Emperor’s New School). While there hadn’t been a movie in the Disney Animated Canon quite like it before, it would not be the last time Disney attempted a gag-based riff on a popular fairy tale. Unfortunately the next time they attempted that was Chicken Little (also directed by Dindal), and the results were absolutely disastrous. Stay tuned.

*Narrator Kuzco seems to exist outside of the film, able to interact with it not unlike Robert Downey, Jr. in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. (Both movies, in fact, have a scene where the narrator freezes the projector and draws on the screen)