FILM 2085: THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE (2000)

TRIVIA: Patrick Warburton improvised when Kronk hummed his own theme song when he was carrying Kuzco (David Spade) in the bag to the waterfall. Disney's legal department had Warburton sign all rights to the humming composition over to them.

Playwright David Mamet has said he considers the script for this movie to be one of the most brilliantly innovative which Hollywood has produced in recent years.

Sting's wife Trudie Styler made a documentary about the troubled making of this movie as part of the deal that involved her husband working on the movie. Her completed documentary, "The Sweatbox", is owned by Disney and can be watched on-line on vidme.

The makers of this movie originally wanted to get Sting to sing the opening song, but he said he was too old, they needed someone more hip and younger. So they went with Sir Tom Jones, who is eleven years older than Sting. He did write "My Funny Friend and Me", which included a music video from the movie.

Because of the allusion in the title, the movie is often wrongly described as a version of "The Emperor's New Clothes" by Hans Christian Andersen. While some character traits of the main character are similar to the title character in Andersen's story, there are no further connections. Instead, the story shares much more similarities with the fairy tale "Kalif Storch" (Caliph Stork) by Wilhelm Hauff.

The cut-away to the chimp with the bug is a subtle reference to one of the opening shots of Citizen Kane (1941). During the opening montage of the Xanadu Estate, there is a similar shot of a pair of monkeys eating bugs.

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