From the very first frames, viewers can tell the adult-oriented French cartoon The Rabbi’s Cat is going to feature some lovely, bright animation and an exotic setting. That’s almost but not quite enough to leaven a muddled story that requires a bit too much contemplation. The film is based on the work of French comic book artist Joann Sfar, who wrote and directed the lavishly animated, mostly successful biopic Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life. Sfar co-writes and co-directs The Rabbi’s Cat, ensuring the artist’s vision is, for better or worse, fully preserved.

A few years ago, Walt Disney Pictures tried to declare an end to “traditional” hand-drawn, 2-D animation. Then they bought out cutting-edge 3-D animation studio Pixar, which promptly took over all cartoon-related duties at Disney. Pixar seized the opportunity to announce that the death of traditional animation was greatly overstated. (God love those Pixar people.) So here we are, several years later, ready to ogle the first honest-to-goodness Disney toon in the classic mold in many a moon: the fairy tale-informed The Princess and the Frog. Ignoring ill-advised computer-animated experiments like Meet the Robinsons and Bolt and direct-to-video junk like Bambi II and The Emperor’s New Groove 2: Kronk’s New Groove, this is the first time Disney’s looked like Disney since ... 2002’s Lilo & Stitch at least.