I don't know, I guess some jokes which sound good just don't end up looking all that funny on-screen.
Take the scene where Mickey, Froggy, and Buckwheat try to get kicked out of class by disrupting the teacher's lesson with a spontaneous Dynamo Dick comic book recitation. Sounds amusing, but....
When they're punished by having to write "I will be a good pupil" 100 times on the board, Froggy gets an idea: he wedges 5 chalks in an eraser to expedite the process. Again, funny on paper, but rather obvious in the viewing stage.
During the fishing scene, the writers of this film try their darnedest to be funny. Buckwheat asks Froggy why he included a toy mouse in his bait. "To catch catfish," Froggy replies. As Froggy shows his pals how an "expert" casts, he catches the backseat of his pants (Ouch!) That was one of the few fairly funny gags.
Other gags would have been funny if they made a little more sense. When Mickey catches a pail during an overhead cast, it sends him flying to the edge of the pier (gee, what a light kid Mickey must be!). He yells for help at that point (he's still on the pier, and not even close to falling in the water...what is he yelling "help" for??) At one point Buckwheat falls into the water, as do the rest of the gang at some point. It turns out the water is very shallow, yet they all yell "help!" (huh?)
The best joke is where Buckwheat and Froggy are fishing on either side of the pier, and their hooks get caught on each other in the water. This causes Froggy and Buckwheat to literally pull each other back and forth while commenting on how strong their fish must be. Now, THAT was well-done!
And then, of course, there just HAS to be an adult (the "wise old fisherman") to teach the kids a lesson about truancy from school, studying hard, bla bla bla. This had been done before in previous Our Gang shorts (such as "Robot Wrecks" and "Good Bad Boys").
Ah, for the good OL' days of Hal Roach!
Oh, well.
