It has rarely been disputed that director Tim Burton offers one of the most unique viewpoints in movie-making today. Whether it be “Big Fish” or the gloomy classic “Batman,” Burton’s name has always stood out for his macabre visions.

Burton’s acting troupe, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, take the stage once again to revive the dark enthusiasm of his mind with the claymation-style worlds modeled after the 1993 genre-setting “A Nightmare Before Christmas.”

Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter collaborate as the voices of Victor Van Dort and the Corpse Bride, an unlikely couple thrown into a cursed matrimony after Van Dort accidentally gives his vows and a wedding ring to a murdered bride waiting for true love to break her curse.

When Van Dort realizes what he’s done, he tries to flee the musically inclined underworld in hopes of returning to the warm-blooded embrace of his other fiancee, Victoria. Yet, as he stays longer in the underworld and gets to know his undead wife, he starts to believe that his reclusive personality and pale complexion would be best lived out – or to die for in this case – with his Corpse Bride.

Like “Nightmare,” Burton’s new “Corpse Bride” is centered around a misunderstood protagonist whose discovery of a new world and new people make him rethink his own life in his current surroundings. Unfortunately, this theme is just as recognizable in “Nightmare” as is the fashion from which the films’ worlds were created. It seems Burton was so set on recreating the harrowing ambience with intricate models and painstaking attention to detail, it overshadowed the depth of his story.

It is disappointing “Corpse Bride” follows such a formulaic plot, because with the creation of a new world, Burton could have used this platform to create pioneering concepts with his characters.

Nearly all of the humor comes from the dead cast, sometimes poking fun at its own deadly fixation and fairy-tale stereotypes. The end is especially poignant in the film, as the two worlds’ convergence opens the floodgates of comedy-via-misunderstanding, making this array of situational comedy one of the only scenes to have weight in an otherwise shallow story.

Not unlike many other directors experimenting with new genres and concepts, Burton’s claymation world seemed to occupy all of his attention, giving the rest of the film’s elements a lack of focus. Perhaps after a couple more attempts, this genre will not be such a novelty, allowing Burton to lend his extraordinary storytelling abilities to a new project.

Until then, we will have to suffice pulling out the VCR and watching “A Nightmare Before Christmas.”