All Wet (1927)
★½ — All Wet (1927)
All Wet is a seven-minute animated short released in 1927 by the Walt Disney Studio, featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the character Disney produced for Universal Pictures before the more famous mouse arrived on the scene. The premise is pleasingly simple: Oswald takes up a position as a beach lifeguard, largely as an excuse to be near a certain Miss Rabbit, who is not exactly a passive object of affection and engineers her own boating mishap to draw his attention. It is a light, gag-driven piece typical of the silent animation shorts being churned out during that period, when the format was still very much finding its feet and filmmakers were learning what the medium could and could not do.
The film was co-directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, the artistic partnership that defined the studio's output during these early years. Iwerks was the principal draughtsman behind many of the Oswald shorts, and his influence on the visual style of this period is hard to overstate. For context, Disney had begun producing the Oswald series in 1927, and you can see the same creative team at work in Trolley Troubles, which appeared the same year. The studio would, of course, go on to produce Steamboat Willie the following year, the short that effectively changed everything, and it is worth bearing in mind just how small the distance in time is between these two productions. All Wet sits squarely in the period of experimentation that made that later leap possible. The cast of voice performers, if there were any credited, is not documented, which is entirely consistent with the silent era conventions of the time (intertitles and musical accompaniment did most of the heavy lifting).
Viewed today, All Wet occupies a curious position: it is historically significant in a way that rather overshadows its modest entertainment value. The animation is functional rather than fluid, the comedy polished but unremarkable by later standards, and the story is the kind of brief, breezy thing that was designed to fill a few minutes before the main feature rather than to stand alone as a work of art. Audiences familiar with the sharper, more confident Disney shorts that followed, or indeed with something like The Skeleton Dance from just two years later, will notice the difference in ambition and execution. For a broader sense of what 1920s cinema was producing at the time this short appeared, it is also worth a glance at The General, which shows just how sophisticated the era's best filmmaking could be, even without sound.
1927. 98 years old. And it shows. This is the character before Mickey Mouse. That's about the only reason you'd watch.
There is not a great deal more to add, honestly. Oswald is a footnote that became a historical curiosity, and shorts like this one are really only worth tracking down if you are piecing together the story of how Disney became Disney. The gags do not land the way they once might have, and at seven minutes it never outstays its welcome, but it never quite justifies the visit either. Sometimes the most interesting thing about a film is simply the date on the tin.
Rating: ★½ | Year: 1927 | Watched: 2025-09-07
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Disney Plus
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Walt Disney: Trolley Troubles (1927) · The Skeleton Dance (1929) · The Barn Dance (1929) · Steamboat Willie (1928)
More from the 1920s: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · The Docks of New York (1928) · A Throw of Dice (1929)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
