Starring: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson (I)

5 out of 10 stars: Director Tim Burton's Corpse Bride is a visual marvel, a rich and sumptuous animated film, where almost any single frame would be worthy of freezing and putting up on a wall. Unfortunately all those frames run together making for another confused (and sometimes boring) attempt by Mr. Burton to put his ardent feelings for stop-motion animation and Edward Gorey-gothic themes into a film that succeeds as a whole. They don't and it doesn't.

One shouldn't take an appreciation for an element of a film, like outstanding design, and confuse that with an appreciation for the film as a whole. That's what seems to have happened with Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. Nightmare was largely ignored upon initial release by the general public but, like the undead, it rose from its box office grave and had a rampaging success with its merchandising material. The stuff sold like hotcakes. So much so that Disney, who owned the property, had entire sections of their store catalog devoted to Nightmare, with Skellington costumes and snowglobes and figurines of the three mischief-makers of the movie, Lock, Shock and Barrel.

Nightmare has become, like the Ian Falconer book series "Olivia," one of those titles that well-meaning parents shove on their only child in the hope that they're not infantilizing their prodigy's entertainment. (The child usually wants to really watch Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles or SpongeBob Squarepants or something bad for them.) The songs were in minor keys! It was a gothic version of the stop-motion animation from the parents' past! It looked so cool!

There was, however, more gravy than grave in Nightmare. Danny Elfman's songs, save "What's This," were second-tier; they wouldn't have survived the out-of-town development process from an off-Broadway musical. The story was convoluted and the film progressively unravelled in the same way as it main villain, Oogie Boogie, did. Yes, there were some grand moments, but they never added up.

But both the tunes and the story in Nightmare are superior to those in The Corpse Bride (save, in this case, the title theme). They've obviously improved on the technology behind it (the faces are much more expressive) and there are a few sublime moments here as well; but they are few and far between.

In Corpse Bride Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp) is betrothed to Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson) even though the two have never met. The Everglots (voiced by Joanna Lumley and Albert Finney) are old money but they've run out of funds. To continue their pampered existence they need the marriage to the nouveau riche Van Dorts (voiced by Tracy Ullman and Paul Whitehouse), who are successful fishmongers. Propriety and manners are all in this world and Victor can't seem to get his vows right at the rehearsal so he's banished by Pastor Galswells (Christopher Lee) until he can learn them. Victor runs deep into the woods where, in reciting his lines, he accidentally puts his wedding ring on the bony finger of Emily (Helena Bonham Carter), whose hand is protruding from her unmarked grave. Emily rises from the earth and takes Victor to the land of the dead. Victor, who does have feelings for the breathing Victoria, attempts to annul his marriage and get back the land of the living.

The opening thirty minutes of this film are supposed to give the viewer some idea of the suffocating life that both Victor and Victoria (rim shot here for the Blake Edwards joke) live. Unfortunately it just serves to bore us and keeps on boring us long after we've gotten the point. The two sets of parents are neither interesting nor humorous and they occupy a lot of screen time.

But, if Nightmare Before Christmas proved anything they may not need to; they just need to look cool.