A Wet Knight (1932) User Reviews

Exceptionally good and very strange Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon

[llltdesq · 8/10 · 12 April 2015]

This is an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit short produced by Walter Lantz. There will be spoilers ahead:

This is a very strange and rather surreal short which starts out comparatively quietly and surreal! Oswald is serenading Kitty in a boat-which is being pushed by a duck wearing a top hat and smoking a cigar! The rather calm and tranquil evening is broken by a fist fight between two clouds, one of which causes it to rain when it begins to cry! It becomes totally dark when the sun is punched twice and it to begins to cry! I'm not even going to tell you what the duck does after Oswald and his date reach the shore.

The "lucky" couple find a haunted house and go inside, to encounter all manner of things. First up is a trio of ghosts and then one ghost playing an organ. It's an interesting house and things are only beginning! You see, while they're meeting ghosts, a gorilla has been going a few rounds with lightning outside, a fight which must be seen to be appreciated. As Oswald is messing with the ghost on the organ, the gorilla wanders up and the fun begins. During the chase by the gorilla and all the subsequent tumult, we come across an effeminate skeleton, a head of hair with a mind of its own and an a most unusual knight in armor.

The climactic scene is an elaborate Rube Goldberg style sequence triggered the second time the gorilla tries to knock a chip off Oswald's shoulder. The first time results in Oswald having quite an experience, the second saves the day and allows Oswald to look like a hero. Lots of strangeness in just under nine minutes.

This short deserves to be more widely known. Recommended.

Nothing at all wet about this Oswald cartoon

[TheLittleSongbird · 8/10 · 3 July 2017]

Despite Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and his cartoons being popular and well received at the time, they have been vastly overshadowed over time by succeeding animation characters. It is a shame as, while not cartoon masterpieces, they are fascinating for anybody wanting to see what very old animation looked like.

The 1932 batch of Oswald cartoons, despite being of an uneven overall standard, has generally been far better than the 1931 group, of which only six were above average or more and the rest were average at best and a few less than that. Of the 1932 batch, 'Wins Out' and 'Let's Eat' were mediocre and 'The Winged Horse' was on the forgettable side, but 'Grandma's Pet', 'Beau and Arrows' and 'Mechanical Man' were good.

Like as was said with the previous cartoon 'Cat Nipped', 'A Wet Knight' is up there as one of the better 1932 cartoons and is one of Oswald's overall best in a while, comparing extremely favourably as far as Lantz-era Oswald cartoons go. The story is not exactly special and structurally on the thin side, but with the execution of the gags that is not as big a problem as it has been in previous early 30s cartoons.

Best assets are the gags and the music. The gags are some of the funniest and imaginatively timed of the 1932 cartoons, so refreshing after seeing many previous early 30s Oswald cartoons where the humour has been hit and miss and not particularly funny. Nothing feels random or repetitive. The music is infectiously jazzy and dynamic as well as lushly orchestrated, synchronising very well with the music. The synchronisation is remarkably natural.

Also good is the animation. It may occasionally lack refinement, but most of it is smooth and detailed with Oswald's movements, gestures and expressions still very much natural, like the generally freer, more elaborate and faster look of a good deal of Oswald cartoons at this time. Drawing has occasional crudeness but is mostly fine and transitions don't feel as choppy and incomplete as some of the worst Oswald cartoons.

Standing out too is the atmosphere, remarkably atmospheric, in a creepy and strangely surreal way, for an Oswald cartoon. Oswald is very likable and Kitty is adorable.

Overall, very enjoyable and atmospheric, nothing at all wet here. 8/10 Bethany Cox

It Was A Dark and Stormy Knight

[boblipton · 6/10 · 22 May 2010]

A solid Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon as Oswald and Bunny go canoing, it starts to rain and they decide to take shelter -- in a haunted house, of course. There is a long tradition of scary children's cartoons, but they began shrinking in importance by the mid-1930s in favor of funny ones until only Columbia maintained a regular tradition of Hallowe'en cartoons and Warners would start to do routines in which Bugs Bunny would treat the scary monster -- in tennis shoes -- with no more respect than Elmer Fudd.

But they're still a lively genre at this stage, and this one mixes the scary and funny gags at a brisk clip -- and supplement it all with a music score in which piano and xylophone dominate. Definitely worth your time.

One Of The Films That Prove Oswald's Luckiness

[jennywalterfony · 10/10 · 23 February 2013]

Oswald has been referred to in most cartoons as a lucky rabbit. Though some people might find it hard to believe, he is certainly called lucky for a reason. If you watch this short, you're going to see why.

Oswald and his sweetheart enter a spooky castle to find shelter from a storm. The things they encounter become more eerie until they are met by a fearsome ape. In his fight against the ape, Oswald challenges the latter to knock the small lumber off his shoulder. When the ape did so, the lumber created a chain reaction, toppling all sorts of ornaments before activating a cannon. The cannon fires at the ape, destroying the beast. This certainly explains why Oswald is called lucky.