There is a sameness to all these videos made by Disney. This one gives a brief history of the need for people to fish and then takes us on a trip with good old Goofy. Of course, it is one pitfall after another as he tries to do what the narrator says, missing the boat each time. But he is really undaunted no matter how many failures occur. There is a lot of action and a bit of fun here and there.

With having found the Goofy short movie How To Swim to be surprisingly dry,I started to hope that Goofy's second sea related title,would allow the character to reach the high seas.

The plot:

Showing how the signs of the zodiac are connected to the activates of fish's,the film then follows Goofy gathering all of his fishing gear up,as he goes in search of "the big one".

View on the film:

Breaking the fourth wall down within the first 2 minutes by revealing each scene in the movie,to in fact be a page from a book,director Jack Kinney takes the film in a wild,off-beat direction,thanks to each of the fish that Goofy attempts to catch being brilliantly animated,and each of them having their own personality.Along with the fish's,Kinney also shows that Goofy's "big catch" may be nearer to him,then he ever could have expected.

How to Fish is not one of the best How to cartoons for me. It does have a formulaic story, you know that Goofy is going to demonstrate in how not to do something(in this case fishing) and you do get an inkling of how it is going to end. However, it is still thoroughly entertaining. For those who love fishing, my dad and grandfather do and I do remember going fishing once(though personally it's not one of my favourite things to do, I can definitely see though why it is so for others) and watching How to Fish was a piece of nostalgia for me in a way. Goofy is on top form, doing what he does best, being likable and clumsy without meaning to and we love him for it. As ever there are bits where he finds things that we find obvious but he doesn't, again this said that has always been part of his charm and he was always at his best in that situation. There are some really great gags, especially when Goofy lures a fly to catch a fish and we see the action from the fish's perspective under-water and in the finale when he catches the motor to his boat instead of catching the real fish. The animation is fluid and vibrant as you'd expect from Disney shorts of this particular period, and the music is very energetic. All in all, a very, very good Goofy short, although the story is formulaic, Goofy's antics and charm and the gags really carry the day. 9/10 Bethany Cox