Magic Movie: The Emperor’s New Groove

The Emperor’s New Groove

Chicha, in my opinion, is a frontrunner for Coolest Animated Parent. She is a canny, hardworking, and supremely maternal figure who even while endlessly pregnant, always looks stylish. Her piled curls, headbands, yellow tunics and big earrings are so reminiscent of 1970’s chic that I almost wonder if the animators were influenced by Halston or some other designer, rather than Peruvian weaves and Pre-Columbian jewelry, a la Frida Kahlo.
Chicha always knows what to say, and has a subtle sense of humor, such as her dialogue when she has locked Yzma in the closet. She is a good match for her husband, the docile and seemingly passive Pacha.
Pacha is a water-off-a-duck’s-back type; it takes a lot to rile him. He is good-natured and, like most big guys, unusually gentle. He is mild-mannered but will stand up for what he believes in with rock-hard firmness. He loves his family, and it shows, is affectionate and playful. Somehow Chicha and Pacha manage to take things as the come, with aplomb. You can’t really speak disparagingly of a guy who entreats a spoiled prince not to raze his home and village, is selfishly and off-handedly rebuffed, then not only saves the prince’s life but leads him back to town on a long journey where he is baited, teased about his weight, forced to sleep out in the rain, gets scorpions shaken onto him, is jammed into a crevice, tied to a log and thrown over a waterfall-and takes it all in his stride.
Pacha is a gentle giant with a sweet sense of humor and a genuine concern for mankind: he protests the development of a valley with sublime natural beauty, he helps a man thrown from a window, he even lends Kuzco his homemade sweater. He and Chicha willingly open their home to a guy who has no sense of propriety and shirks responsibility and morality at every turn.
I must mention that John Goodman and David Spade are perfectly suited to their characters, which are basically animated representations of roles they’ve previously played. Like Dan Conner on Roseanne, Pacha is a fiercely loyal, hardworking family man; while Kuzco is a childish, charming ne’er-do-well who foists himself upon, and comes to love, an extended family, like CJ Barnes on 8 Simple Rules.
Goodman seems to be following in the footsteps of Phil Harris, who also voiced big-boned, jovial Disney characters: Little John in Robin Hood, and Thomas O’Malley in The Aristocats. In addition to Pacha, he also portrayed gentle giant Sulley in Monsters, Inc. and fat, friendly Big Daddy Le Bouff in The Princess and the Frog. In fact, O’Malley, like Pacha, leads a lost aquaintance back to their home, and grows close to him in the process.