If you put your stamp on everything you direct, then you get to be an auteur, not a mere director, and might even get the dubious honor of having your name smacked down in front of your movie’s title, your reputation overshadowing any the movie might develop on an individual basis. That stamp, realistically, doesn’t have to be a marker of talent—how would we have known Jerry Bruckheimer’s name otherwise? Even Plan 9 From Outer Space is known, retrospectively, as “Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space,” thanks, in fact, to a biopic made by one Tim Burton reviving interest in the spectacularly untalented Wood. And that Tim Burton is, of course, the Tim Burton of Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, this year’s second entry into his oeuvre, following closely on the heels of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, also starring Johnny Depp. So what is Burton’s stamp? Well, like most directors cum auteurs, he has a few. He’s an Art Director’s Director, and he fills the screen with a unique and overwhelming look for each of his films, making sure that (even if they’re embarrassing fluff like Big Fish) you’ll remember the sets and costumes for years to come; he gives eccentric actors like Johhny Depp or Burton’s muse and fiancée Helena Bonham Carter chances to shine and mesmerize as they do best; and above all, he embraces the weird, the disturbing, and the “off.” Burton is at his best when he is in the dark, be it the hauntingly graceful macabre of Nightmare Before Christmas, or in contrasting the clear threat the Lite-Brite suburb poses to the denizen of a black and grey world in Edward Scissorhands.

What happened with Corpse Bride, then? This looked set to be the definitive “Burton Film,” the one that clearly combined his favorite and much practiced elements together in one great orgasm of auteurist flourish. Bonham Carter was the one bright (or should I say, mercifully dark) spot in Big Fish, a painfully earnest film whose only ambiguity revolved around who most disappointed me—Burton or the once unpredictable Ewan McGregor—and the idea of pairing her with Johnny Depp in an animated story featuring Victorians, sex, the dead, (and the possibilities of necrophilic Victorians therein) sent a shiver of anticipatory delight down my spine. Evidently Burton had wrangled his ideal film out of some studio, and his 15 years working with Depp would come to its most delightful fruition yet.

Victorian caricatures are amusing, and well-suited to animation, but this is less an Edward Gorey book come to life than a bewildering effort to jolly up some dark, rotted imagery to be made palatable. Corpse Bride suffers from a surprising lack of attention to narrative or visual nuance. And after being asked to share a screen with a singing maggot, Johnny can’t be blamed for phoning it in. Not morbidly funny, nor devilishly ironic, the singing maggot is simply annoying as all hell. What should have stayed the one-liner featured in the trailers (“He-he. Maggots!” Bonham Carter’s Emily laughs nervously, pushing a popped eyeball back in) somehow becomes an entire, overused character. The venerable Emily Watson is given absolutely nothing to work with as the abandoned fiancée Victoria, and I’m still uncertain whether it is boredom or discomfort that makes her speak in an unnatural pitch so far above her usual expressive tones.

Lest I be too harsh, there are some moments of beauty, and other outbursts worthy of affection. Bonham Carter is dangerously, unstably dreamy as Emily, and the animation of her character harks back to the beauty and choreography of The Nightmare Before Christmas. As she laments her chances as a young, single, putrefying girl at snaring Victor’s (Depp) interest, her hand lingers longingly along a door in such a breathtakingly delicate way that you forgive the forgettable musical number accompanying the visual. The villain of the piece, Barkis Bittern, seems so much to me like a chiding rebuttal to Jim Carrey’s unfortunate performance in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, that I had to laugh when I recognized the posture, the mannerisms, even the same pinstriped pants. There’s also a skeleton dance bit that’s a delightful nod to Disney’s early animation, The Skeleton Dance—it’s nice to see the lineage recognized. The film isn’t without sparks of creativity, it’s just that they’re so fleeting and make me think longingly of better examples, like Burton’s Nightmare partner Henry Selick‘s Monkeybone (2001), an underappreciated and darkly humorous foray into the underworld that has a much better musical number welcoming you to Hell.

It must be said, that though the film ends on a lovely image of Emily’s transformation and final journey towards peace, which even provoked a tear or two, I was still mostly filled with frustration that Burton’s most recent efforts, though clearly capable of such beauty, have all been undermined by the shiny, mood-killing kitsch that his Ed Wood gloried in so effectively. Come back to the Dark Side, Tim, the Force is stronger here.