Hmm, well, this one is kind of different. A guy sits on a log, fishing. A boy sneaks up behind him and knocks off the rock on the other end of the log, thus causing the log and the fisherman to tumble into the creek below. People show up and laugh hysterically as the fisherman angrily stomps off. I mean, it’s incredibly rudimentary, but this feels like the first time one of these shorts has had a “story.” A plot, if you will. I mean, you could perhaps make the case that something like The Kiss had a story and The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, certainly did, I suppose, but this short tells a small story from beginning to end. Prior to this, even if these shorts had something going on, you only saw a small part of it, as in Mary Queen of Scots, where we only saw a brief flash of the larger story. Also, this one is interesting for another reason; I’ve talked before about how these shorts are kind of YouTube before YouTube. Well, if Boxing Cats was the original cat video, I suppose this is the original prank video and just like on YouTube, it’s totally staged! This one kickstarts a much more obnoxious trend than Boxing Cats did, as far as I’m concerned. 0 stars.
tl;dr – the original prank video is also one of the first shorts to have a rudimentary story. 0 stars.