Canned after a bad review, The Annihilation of Fish remained lost for more than two decades, never to be seen in theaters, television, or physical media. To be fair to the review, this romcom is quite eccentric. The two troubled leads, Fish and Poinsettia, see unseen entities that everyone around them understands as hallucinations. It’s not totally clear what ails them, only that something does. However, James Earl Jones and Lynn Redgrave deliver such outstanding performances that capture their humanity. Cultural reasons for their hallucination aside, it’s quite sweet how they both affirm each other’s reality, resulting in a uniquely gentle depiction of romance in old age. The Annihilation of Fish is a romcom not like the others, but the grace and empathy shown is something we’d like to see more of.
"It’s also obvious this film is the essence of what makes [director] Charles Burnett’s hold on the American mythos peerless and exceptional."
— Robert Daniels
A Jamaican widower recently released from a mental institution and a former housewife with an imagined lover in the form of 19th-century composer Giacomo Puccini become the unlikely tenants of an eccentric widow in Los Angeles.
