When the fish drown in the water No one is saying that modest, independent studios are obliged to shoot consistently high-end projects in the image and likeness of older comrades Pixar, Blue Sky and DreamWorks. Working on each cartoon, no matter how drawn or created with the help of computer technology, takes a lot of effort, time and money from the creators, from which it is incredibly difficult to supply a consistently high-class spectacle to the stream. And even well-known players sometimes find themselves in an unpleasant situation when one of the screws of their debugged system falls off from a clearly allocated place. "The Adventures of Mr. Peabody and Sherman", "Epic", "The Good Dinosaur" and some other works of famous studios were not only frankly mediocre criticism, but also suffered disaster at the box office, not recouping even minimal production costs. However, single failures are not able to bring major studios to their knees, since the number of successful projects coming out thanks to the incredible talent and enthusiasm of the creators significantly outweighs the failures. This is not the case for companies like Ruthless Studios, for which a single failure can be a memorial song. Trying to get into the fairway of Pixar or DreamWorks, small studios often use successfully tested in the past developments, building on the basis of the known history of an inexpensive speculative project in the hope of catching the smoldering glory of long-standing projects released by famous competitors. This is confirmed by a full-length cartoon from Ruthless Studios, called “Fishermen”. If we consider the name on the original, it becomes clear that the creators of an independent studio beat the popularity of “Underwater Bratva”, supplementing it with details from “Search for Nemo”.
So, the plot of the cartoon, as it is not difficult to guess, unfolds under the sea surface, where a stormy fish community lives, living according to its own laws and customs. The main characters of the story are the restless trio in the face of Scatik, Lantern and Ignobryushka, who in one far from the most wonderful day are faced with a difficult task. After a sudden attack by a formidable toothy shark, a nightmarish chaos has brewed in a peaceful underwater community, in which the hero’s friend Ollie, an octopus, disappears. Wherever her friends searched for her, the result was the same: Ollie disappeared in an unknown direction and it was unclear where to find her. However, friends are not left in trouble, and because what fears did not feed the hearts of Scatik and company, they must get out of the known territory and go in search of the missing girl, until she definitely got into the most unpleasant alteration. Getting beyond their native reef, the heroes meet on the way a lot of discoveries, make unexpected acquaintances and try not to fall into the jaws of angry underwater monsters waiting for unsuspecting prey. And the further the comrades swim, the more discoveries they learn, doing it in a surprisingly slow and emotionless way, as if they are members of a mediocre scientific circle, and not a fervent cartoon for the whole family.
It is not known what the bosses of Ruthless Studios counted on when they put in the chair of the director of "Fish" completely unprepared for work with animation Evan Tramell, who had previously distinguished himself only by one full-length work in the horror genre and about the artistic qualities of which it is better not to remember. Having received the script of another not the most successful person in creative terms, Lisa Baget, Tramell, incidentally having nothing in common with Catherine Tramell from "Basic Instinct", undertook to make an animation of lower technical quality, aggravated by the inexpressive dramaturgy and absolute mediocrity of the characters' characters. The efforts of the director from “Fishes” turned out to be a strikingly boring, long and completely monotonous pseudo-adventure tape, not comparable to “Underwater Brat” or “Finding Nemo”. Instead of saturating the story with good, actionable humor, completely absent from the script, Tramall is distracted by drawing insignificant details that still cause no admiration. The production budget of "Rybok" did not allow the art department to invest in the creation of the cartoon adequate high-class efforts, and the director did not really understand what he needed to do with the available material, from which the rather modest timing of the tape turned into an obstacle that not everyone is destined to pass with dignity.
The unfunny situation that has developed with “Fishermen”, is not redeemed by the fact that the cartoon is aimed primarily at viewers of primary school and kindergarten age. Evan Tramell tried to saturate the plot with numerous scientific references describing certain features of the fish that appeared on the screen, but the director was clearly not familiar with the best creations of Jacques Cousteau and Animal planet, from which his attempts to put encyclopedic knowledge into the heads of young viewers fails completely. It is amazing how uninteresting and tortured the details of the life of marine fauna, which in fact has amazing features. Thus, in addition to the failure that accompanies the dramatic and technical components of the project, the director failed to build a digestible lesson around the Pisces, allowing children to better orient themselves in the school biology course. If we consider the "Fish" from the point of view of the youngest viewers who do not really understand what is happening, then they are likely to like the unsuccessful experiments of Evan Tramell, since despite the complete inconsistency of the author, the cartoon is able to cause some positive emotions thanks to colorful pictures and funny faces of the main characters, who at the time become full members of the deep-sea comedian troupe. The rest of the audience is clearly too old for adventures that close their eyes and put them to sleep.
In the end, I want to say that “Fishermen” is difficult to advise for mandatory viewing, since the creators of the cartoon clearly did not calculate their own strength, releasing a frankly mediocre, secondary and simply uninteresting spectacle. Completely superfluous person in the creative group, Evan Tramell could not cope with any of the components of the production. And for those rare successes that miraculously got into the final version of “Fish”, it is worth thanking the artists who animated the frankly gray plot with funny faces, periodically breaking through the veil of directorial failure. And in such a depressing situation, it is not possible to advise “Fishermen” to view. The exception is for those viewers who have not yet learned to walk and do not understand what Evan Tramell has presented them with the permission of Ruthless Studios, who are staggering in different directions.
2 out of 10