Julia Arsenault (ja_kitty_71) This is one of my favorite Mickey Mouse cartoons from 1929. In this short, Mickey has a job as a beach lifeguard. And while he was singing with seaside friends (the seals, the gulls, etc.), he spotted Minnie Mouse drowning. As it was his duty, Mickey came to the rescue. His seaside friends clapped and cheered, as he placed Minnie on the shore."Where am I?" was the distressed Minnie's words when she came too.; she began to cry. But fortunately, Mickey and the seaside critters put on a song-and-dance show to cheer her up.So my overall opinion is that I really love this cartoon. I also noticed in later cartoons, there was recycled animation from this cartoon.

Robert Reynolds This is an early Disney cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse. There will be spoilers ahead:This short is a puzzlement. It starts out looking like it might have a semblance of a plot-Mickey is a lifeguard who winds up rescuing Minnie. That's pretty much it for a plot, but even as thin as it is, it's more of a plot than many early Mickey shorts had.It looks almost as though a plot was intended, but they got stuck after Minnie is rescued, so Ub Iwerks basically animated about three and a half minutes of gags set to musical numbers to fill out the time. That's not the only oddity. Two gags early on received the "repeat three times" treatment, usually done so drawings can be used repeatedly to save time and money. It looks and feels like a "fulfilling contractual obligations" short. Even when Disney did that, it still comes off better than many other studios typical work.Along the way, we get a walrus "singing", the sight of Minnie wading in the surf in high heels and a daring rescue by Mickey of Minnie, among other things. Not too bad for a time filler.This short is available on the Mickey Mouse In Black and White, Volume Two Disney Treasures DVD set. The set is worth tracking down.

MartinHafer I have been watching my Mickey Mouse DVDs we got for Christmas and noticed that most of the cartoons before this one in the Disney Treasures DVD (Mickey in Black & White volume 2) consisted of lots of song and dance numbers with little plot. However, this one appeared quite different--with Mickey and Minnie enjoying a day at the beach. Minnie is soon pulled out to sea and Mickey becomes the hero. HOWEVER, after about 4 minutes, the cartoon abruptly turned to what seemed like filler--lots of the same old song and dance as in the other cartoons of the era. Still, it is quite charming and worth seeing--at least for the first portion. Not a great cartoon, but compared to what else was being made at the time, quite good.

wmorrow59 This early Mickey Mouse cartoon is aptly titled. It's set at the seashore, and in shot after shot the wild surf crashes against the rocks, ebbs, rolls back, then hits the shore again with redoubled force. The waves are beautiful but dangerous, as we find in due course when they overpower our star performers and fling them every which way. The ocean itself has personality in this short, and that's impressive for a cartoon of this vintage. You've got to give the Disney animators credit for not playing it safe; recreating the violent motion of the sea was challenging in the era of black & white cel animation, but nevertheless they chose to give the customers their money's worth with a show of difficult water effects. They make it look easy, and still manage to maintain a light and amusing tone.The credit for the generally high quality of the early Mickeys belongs primarily to one man, legendary animator Ub Iwerks, who drew most of the studio's initial talkie output practically solo. The opening title card for these seminal works reads "A Walt Disney Comic by Ub Iwerks," a singular credit Disney would never grant any other employee. Iwerks was a key figure in putting the Disney Studio on the map and making the mouse world famous, but he chafed under Walt's dominance and left the studio not long after Wild Waves was released in the summer of 1929.But that's real world stuff. Back in Cartoon Land, this particular entry begins with a terrific shot of Lifeguard Mickey sitting atop his tall chair, strumming his guitar and singing for an audience of two seals, a pelican, and other assorted water fowl. The waves crash as Mickey's listeners all sway to the music in perfect synchronized style, while even his chair bobs to the rhythm on alarmingly rubbery legs. Minnie is introduced in the mildly risqué fashion still permissible at this time, with the kind of gag that would soon become verboten: she's changing into her bathing suit in one of those old-fashioned "bathing machines" that looks like an outhouse on wheels. We hear her singing but she's not visible. Then, on a clothesline leading out the window, we watch as her slip, her bra, and her panties appear on the line, one by one, to flap in the breeze. Minnie appears in the doorway in her swimsuit with a "Ta-daaaa!" gesture, skips into the surf, and is promptly swallowed by a wave and carried screaming out to sea. Mickey, of course, tosses his guitar aside and comes to the rescue. He is hindered by more of those diabolical waves, but eventually manages to haul Minnie ashore. When she begins to weep he attempts to amuse her by dancing a hornpipe, and this sets off a general beach musicale, complete with dancing penguins, barking seals, a harp solo played on a fish-net, and a walrus who sings in a basso voice.Wild Waves is a sweet little cartoon that doesn't appear on anyone's list of Disney "classics." It's just another routine Mickey Mouse short, but in a sense that makes it all the more impressive. The Disney cartoons from this period are primitive compared to what would follow in the '30s, but they're highly entertaining, often surprising, and miles ahead of what anyone else was making at the time.