Almost 15 years ago, Toy Story broke all the rules of animation. A little while after that there was a movie called Shrek, and it was so successful that the money men in Hollywood started thinking that if your animated movie wasn’t being populated by computer engineered characters you were practically daring the general public to not see it. Since the traditional cel animation wing of Disney seemingly closed its doors nearly six years ago, it seemed that anyone that specialized in the art of hand drawn animation was either relegated to Saturday morning stuff or oblivion. In an interesting twist of fate, it took one of the guys that started the computer animation revolution to blow the dust off the Ink and Paint division of Disney, and do you know what happened? There’s still some magic in those pencils.

Thanks to producer John Lasseter and his team, Disney finds its way home with The Princess and the Frog, a marvel of both moviemaking artistry and storytelling magic. Several smart decisions make Princess and the Frog a worthy successor to modern Disney classics like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. First was casting the studio’s first African-American princess, a broken barrier nearly rivalled in grandness by the man now occupying the White House. Second is the transfer of setting to a roaring jazz age New Orleans, which gives the film a rambunctious zeal from the supporting characters to the jazz-inspired musical numbers. There’s still a romantic subplot and the talking animal sidekicks, but these elements seem fresher somehow. The relationship between working class waitress Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) and the indulgent Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) seems more Hepburn and Tracy then Cinderella and her Prince Charming.

The story follows Tiana trying to live out her father’s dream of opening a restaurant in the Crescent City, working herself to the nub to earn enough money for a down payment on an old sugar mill where she’ll set up shop. Prince Naveen, meanwhile, rolls into the Big Easy looking for a good time. Cut off by his parents from his family’s large fortune, he’s near penniless but doesn’t seem to care as he strums his ukulele in time with a street band. But money is on the mind of the voodoo enchanted con man Dr Facilier (Keith David). He turns the prince into a frog and his assistant into the prince so that a wealthy socialite will marry the stooge prince and Dr Facilier will get all the money and power he wants.

Its after this that Naveen, in frog form, encounters Tiana thinking she’s a princess, and gets her to kiss him only to turn her into a frog as well. Strangely, this is about half an hour into the story, and you think to yourself that there’s no way that the frog versions of Tiana and Naveen can fall in love, find a way to become human again, defeat the plans of Dr. Facilier and fulfill Louis the Crocodile’s dream of playing trumpet in a jazz band, all in the time remaining. But unlike several of Disney’s recent efforts, outside of collaborations with Pixar that is, one can sense a confidence in the material that’s sometimes been lacking. I’m thinking primarily of films like Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet, in which the studio tried to break formula but seemed to get scared along the way resulting in something that seemed bold but watered down.

But in The Princess and the Frog there was nothing watered down and no expense was spared. As a long time admirer of the art form, I felt positively indulged by this film. This is Disney animation as it was meant to be realized with no attempts at backhand satire or cheap shots at pop culture quirks of the moment. I loved the chemistry between Tiana and Naveen, Dr Facilier is perhaps the best Disney villain since Aladdin’s Jafar, and the songs by Randy Newman were memorable and singable. Sure, you get the traditional happy ending, but it feels like it’s earned in The Princess and the Frog, and not just a forgone conclusion based on the accepted Disney playbook of storytelling. I sincerely hope that this film is commercially successful enough to prove that when you put the right effort into traditional animation it can still surprise you. Welcome home Disney, we missed you.