I’ve championed the output of Pixar Animation Studios often and vigorously over the years, but lately I’ve been nervous. The rare studio that wriggled its way into auteur status, Pixar currently sits in the the middle of stretch in which four of five new full-length features are sequels, suggesting a worrisome lack of imagination. Worse yet, the strategy feels like the insidious influence of the studio’s corporate parent, the Walt Disney Company.

The very developmental existence of Toy Story 4 is still enough to fill me with pain — the film series was already closed out in an ideal fashion — but the new Pixar offering, Coco, provides a solid argument that the studio has its storytelling integrity intact. That is due to the film itself, which is a warm-hearted tale of familial history built respectfully around the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead. What really drives the point home is the abominable short smacked onto the front of the feature.

Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, featuring characters from the surprise Disney smash Frozen is the sort of blatant, hollow cash grab that the Mouse House is known for and that it’s difficult to imagine Pixar ever fully embracing. Stretching painfully to a length that would fill out nicely to thirty minutes of broadcast television time with the requisite number of commercials peppered throughout, the thin adventure sends the sentient snowman from Frozen on a journey to discover the varied holiday traditions beloved by residents in the kingdom presided over by his royal sister pals. It’s an obvious and insipid construct meant for little more than creating an excuse for the manufacture and sale of Frozen-themed Christmas albums.

As dreadful as it is to slog through, Olaf’s Frozen Adventure is a blessed preamble to Coco. It provides a contrast that illuminates the specialness of Pixar’s trademark mixture of grand invention, zippy charm, emotional fluency, and narrative rigor.

Directed by Lee Unkrich (with Adrian Molina credited as co-director), Coco focuses on a twelve-year-old boy named Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez). Living in a modest Mexican town with his extended family, Miguel dreams of becoming a musician, just like his idol, the late, legendary Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt). His aspiration cuts against the strong preferences of his family, which has followed a strict no-music policy since Miguel’s great-great-grandfather went on tour as a musician and never returned home.

Through magical happenstance, Miguel finds himself transported to the Land of the Dead. He needs to get the blessing of one of his relatives to return to his proper place, but that is complicated by Miguel’s insistence on finding a departed family member who will simultaneously accept his dream of playing music. After making a discovery, Miguel believes he’s found a way to accomplish his goal, enlisting a desperate Land of the Dead soul named Héctor (Gael Garcia Bernal) to help him. Miguel also gets a mighty assist from a street dog named Dante, the best screen canine I’ve encountered in ages.

The plot is tight and clean, offering turns that aren’t entirely surprising, but still satisfying with their cleverness. And the Pixar artisans create a vivid world abounding with colorful morbidity. The designs are realized with the studio’s customary vivid smoothness and rich detail, and Unkrich and Molina pace the storytelling expertly. Given the aspirations of the lead character, Coco features more songs than the average Pixar release (which have often settled, sometimes grudgingly, for a couple Randy Newman ditties that could accompany a quick montage). Employing the Frozen songwriting team of Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (who, I now feel compelled to note, had no part in Olaf’s Frozen Adventure), the filmmakers incorporate the numbers smoothly and unobtrusively into the film, even pulling off the nimble feat of taking centerpiece “Remember Me” on its own narrative journey, from goofy lark to poignant beauty.

Coco isn’t one of the towering achievements of Pixar, standing as a marvel of creativity or drawing on wells of emotional power that put most live action movies to shame. It is effective and winning, though. And it demonstrates a welcome commitment to honoring a culture rather than appropriating from it. The film’s runaway success in Mexico speaks to that more convincingly than I ever could. Coco is worthy and wise. The light in that Pixar glow lamp still glows brightly after all.