Film Review: The Emperor's New Groove
The Emperor's New Groove focuses on Cooscos the emperor. I will be analyzing how the story is structured and how it comes together in the end as well as how age appropriate the movie is for its target audience.
The movie begins with one of the ending scenes, the emperor is already a lama and he is sitting in the rain being upset. This scene happens later in the film but they choose to start with this one so that Coosco can narrate the story in the beginning. This is an effective way of showing us the character of Coosco because the point and moral ending of the story is that the character of Coosco changes from being a bad, annoying and mean ruler to one that is good and nice to his people. So the beginning helps us understand how selfish he really is. He is being very sarcastic and we see clips of him throwing out peasants, denying them food.
The entire story is a moral one, and we see the personality of Coosco change through the circumstances that have led him to being stuck with a village man who lives on top of a hill he wants to build his summer home on. Initially, Kuzco was set in his plan to tear down the entire village on top of the hill and create a summer house for himself where he can have parties. By the end, Kuzco and this village man become good friends through the life threatening situations they were put in and thus became better friends that in turn risked each others lives and grew both as people. Through the movie the village man believes in Kuzco's coming of person and helps him on his journey to find the castle even after Kuzco lied to him in shaking hands in agreement that he wouldn't build his summer home on the hill side they live on. Through the whole movie this village man is seen as a moral figure, like an idol to the viewers. He is honest to his word, he goes out of his way to help people and he supports his family no matter what.
The moral story and general story line is not hard to understand as it comes together very easily and can be noticed from the beginning of the film. This is what makes this film appropriate for the target audience that is children. Normally films targeted at children of a young age, include a moral issue that is resolved at the end with a happy story. There are many supporting characters that keep the attention of the children viewers, such as the evil villain yzma, who is against Kuzco and is on her own mission to kill him and her servant Crunk, who is seen as also a character plagued by moral issues such as killing Kuzco.















