Now, hear me out. I love Walter Lantz & his cartoons. His shorts are classics by many means and his cartoons have withstood the test of time just as well as other shorts from the likes of Disney and Warner Bros. But, what comes up must come down, and the quality of the late 60's-early 70's shorts from Lantz's studio were just atrocious. "A fish story"-really creative name by the way- exemplifies all the ways in which the cartoons had gone down in quality. Music is sparse here, animation is absolutely horrible, and even voice actors like Paul Frees and Grace Stafford suffer here, due to their older ages. Hell, even Al Coe's animation suffers greatly here. The sad part about all of this is that this short starts off decently, with okay but not great animation from Al Coe and Bessie being shown to actually care for Charlie when she becomes concerned at his jittering. The fish store scene is also fine, with some decent if uninspired gags. However, it's the second half that absolutely ruins this one. Volus Jones's animation is horrible, and everything seems to go against Charlie for no reason. He'll, even Bessie harasses Charlie in one scene for tripping over a power cord. She then makes the claim "you know I don't like fish!" Really Bessie? How is it that she can be made this dislikable in a short where she barley even appears?! This is just an absolute miserable, annoying, pathetic excuse of a mess for a cartoon. Never, and I mean never ever give this short a chance! Just to watch anything else, even "Gold Diggin' Woodpecker", which is at the very least just simply boring and underwhelming. Never thought I'd be complementing that horrible short, yet here we are...
