So the short introduction is this: at the height of their post-Little Mermaid ‘renaissance’, the Walt Disney Feature Animation studio embarked on an ambitious adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper set in Incan Peru. Titled Kingdom of the Sun, the project laboured through more than four years of development and production before the studio abruptly shut the film down. Director Mark Dindal, who was very the ‘last person standing’ on the troubled project, was given a vastly reduced schedule and budget to get something releasable in cinemas by December 2000. This replacement film is what audiences came to know as The Emperor’s New Groove, a comedy based on the same base material as Kingdom‘s epic musical drama. It under-performed in cinemas, but gained a cult following on home video. These days, with 24 years’ worth of hindsight, it is one of the most enjoyable animated features that Disney ever produced.

Incan emperor Kuzco (David Spade) is the victim of a court coup d’etat at the hands of his former advisor Yzma (Eartha Kitt) and her sidekick Kronk (Patrick Warbuton), and magically transformed into a llama. To return to his palace and return himself to his human form, he must rely on peasant farmer Pacha (John Goodman) for help.

The thing is, comedy doesn’t need visual spectacle to be funny. The Emperor’s New Groove relies on simple character designs, mostly abstract and spartan backgrounds, and avoids most of the computer-generated enhancements that had been transforming Disney’s animation since Beauty and the Beast (1991). With a stark, simplistic look, the film relies instead on timing and acting.

The comic timing is a thing of rare beauty. Dindal and his animation team crib heavily from Warner Bros’ long series of Looney Tunes short films – chiefly those by master animator Chuck Jones. The simpler animation actually helps accentuate the jokes: movement is clearer, and the visual gags immediately crisper. John Debney’s score correspondingly cribs from Looney Tunes stalwart Carl Stalling. I think it’s rather amusing, after Warner Bros took so much inspiration from Disney in initiating their own cartoons, that Disney would flex back and adopt techniques and styles back the other way.

The vocal performances are sensational. Between the leads – Spade, Goodman, Kitt, and Warburton – there is not a single weak link. It is arguable I suppose that Spade has the easiest job, as Kuzco is entirely styled to match Spade’s long-established persona of childish and sarcastic petulance. He has played it in both film (Tommy Boy, Black Sheep) and television (Just Shoot Me) and it works incredibly well in animation. Goodman and Warburton both have wonderfully rich voices and are perfectly suited to their roles. If there is a top highlight to the film, however, it is Eartha Kitt as the vampishly cruel and villainous Yzma. She gets many of the best lines and delivers each of them with a seductive, hilarious menace. She enhances the screenplay so well – and it was already a masterful comedic script.

I am not claiming that The Emperor’s New Groove has the single-best line of dialogue in a feature film; that would be silly. I am, however, claiming that if there was such a single-best line, that ‘Excuse me, I’ve been turned into a cow – can I go home” would be a worthy nominee.

The Emperor’s New Groove is fast-paced, furiously amusing, and genuinely unlike any other Disney feature ever made. There is a sense that the House of Mouse is quietly ashamed of it, but that somehow makes it even more adorable. Doesn’t everyone like the underdog – or llama?