Grade: B

Verdict: Plenty to groove on here.

Details: Featuring the voices of David Spade, John Goodman and Eartha Kitt. Rated G. One hour, 20 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: Somewhere during the development of “Kingdom of the Sun,” a would-be dramatic animated feature about pre-Columbian South American culture, the folks at Disney took a comic detour. They scrapped all but two of the characters, chucked most of the songs Sting had written and turned the project into “The Emperor's New Groove.”

Light on plot but heavy on wiseguy humor and cartoon 'tude, the movie temporarily retires the House-of-Mouse's increasingly stale “classic” formulas. In fact, “Groove” often feels less like a Disney product than a loving salute to the snappy Warner Bros. cartoons of the 1940s, mixed with the off-the-cuff satire of “Aladdin” and “Hercules.”

Not that there aren't plenty of recognizable Disney trademarks. The pinch-faced villainess is like a smoke-cured Cruella De Vil, who happens to have a secret lab Snow White's wicked queen would have loved. And when our hero is transformed by one of her potions into a llama, it may remind you of the boys-into-donkeys scene in “Pinocchio.”

It's fitting, since the teen emperor Kuzko (voice of David Spade) is already a jackass. Supremely bratty Incan ruler of an unspecified Peruvian kingdom, he's the smarmy kind of guy who fires his adviser Yzma (Eartha Kitt) by saying, “We're not picking up your option.”

“Groove” is peppered with that sort of West Coast, showbizzy wit, which will keep grown-ups happy. That's almost a problem, though. At times, it seems there's more here for adults than for kids; the young audience members at the preview screening seemed curiously subdued during the movie.

The plot is pretty simple: Yzma's potion turns Kuzko into a talking llama, instead of a dead biped. Her dim, boy-toy assistant, Kronk (Patrick Warburton), is supposed to kill the teen, but instead accidentally sends him alive to the home of kind peasant Pacha (John Goodman), whose village Kuzko originally intended to raze to build his own vacation home. The rest of the movie concerns their journey back to the castle through a hostile forest, where the sarcastic, selfish Kuzko has to learn lessons about friendship and loyalty.

Getting there is all the fun, as their adventure allows the animators to indulge in a rubber-limbed kind of slapstick that's akin to the antics of the Roadrunner. Plus there's a lot of sly comedy, whether it's the recurrent appearance of a pointedly adorable squirrel (an in joke about Disney's habitual love of cute lil' animals), or a climax featuring an equally adorable, but evil, kitten.

Spade is ideal as a supremely snide hipster in need of comeuppance, while Goodman and Kitt are also fine. But Warburton manages to steal scenes as a sweet-natured hulk whose real delight is his recipe for spinach puffs. Following the loose, jazzy nature of the plot, the animators give the movie a stylized version of the Peruvian countryside. Like most of the other elements, it's a nice change of pace.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service