Alice's Fishy Story

In the early 1920s, Walt Disney tasted his first success with his Alice series. Alice was a little live-action girl who had adventures with her cartoon friends and they were mostly very charming films. "Alice's Fishy Story", however, isn't all that charming and also seems a bit like a rip-off of Hal Roach's 'Our Gang' series.

Unlike the other Alice films I've seen, a huge portion of this is live action and the cartoon portion with Alice interacting with the characters doesn't occur until late in the short. Before this, you see her sneak away from practicing the piano to go fishing with a gang of kids much like the Our Gang kids....minus the black kid. There's a 'funny' fat kid (much like Chubby and Joe Cobb from the Hal Roach series) and many studios tried to copy the success of Our Gang....not just this Alice film.

As far as the cartoon goes, it was just disappointing. The animation isn't as good as you'd expect, there are too many repetitive actions and backgrounds (done, obviously, to save money) and the action just isn't all that charming or interesting. Seeing a cat bashing fish over the head again and again and again isn't all that much fun.

Note that there was a black kid, he was pulling the wagon that the fat kid was in. Funny for the time, I guess. The Little Faux Rascals did look very much like the real Rascals. So that was fun.

As a fan of how films are created, it's fascinating to behold these early works where filmmakers were essentially hobbyists and not artists. Walt Disney wasn't a comedian with a sense for comedic timing, he was a hobbyist integrating live action with animation, and if he drew a cat skating for way longer than is funny, then by God he will include the entire uncut scene.

Hey, films were new, we can't expect Shakespeare... or South Park.