Hundreds of Beavers - Review: The 19th Century, Black and White, Slapstick, Fur Trapper, Epic Comedy You've Been Waiting For

 

Even in the current era of YouTube, crowdfunding, and consumer friendly VFX and editing software, making a movie can still be an intense endeavor. There’s a reason most studios go for broke with budgets and don’t venture outside their comfort zones. Which is why a surprise like “Hundreds of Beavers” not only seems so bizarre but completely takes the world by storm. It bucks the trend of virtually every piece of modern filmmaking and emerges as a film that, simply, feels like it shouldn’t exist. 

Set in the snowy American countryside in the 19th century, the film follows applejack salesman Jean Kayak, played by the film’s co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews (“Lake Michigan Monster”), who, after his orchard is destroyed, stumbles his way into becoming a fur trapper under the guise of a man known as The Master Fur Trapper, played by Wes Tank (“Mags and Julie Go on a Road Trip”). After meeting and falling for The Furrier, played by Olivia Graves (“Hunt Her, Kill Her”), the daughter of The Merchant, played by Doug Mancheski (“Appleton”), Jean sets out to win The Merchant’s approval by trapping and bringing him the furs of... hundreds of beavers. 

On paper, as absurd as it might sound, it is easy to describe “Hundreds of Beavers.” It’s a black and white, lofi, (mostly) silent, slapstick comedy influenced by everything from Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the Super Mario video games. It has the technical construction of something the neighborhood kids could make in a few months in an abandoned warehouse, a copy of Adobe After Effects, and copious amounts of lime-green cloth. Hell, every single animal in the film, from rabbits to beavers to wolves, is represented by a human in a mascot-esque outfit. 

Somehow, it all works brilliantly. Primarily, it comes back to the fact that at no point do Tews or co-writer/director Mike Cheslik (“Lake Michigan Monster”) feel like they’re winking at the audience. By fully committing to the absurdity of their tale, they allow us to buy into it as well. It doesn’t come across as a cheap film where humans dress in animal mascot outfits; that’s just the animals in the film and how they look. It’s the kind of film where you can imagine actual blood, sweat, and tears went into the making of it. It has more energy and effort than 99% of the Hollywood studio comedies released over the last decade. 

While the motley crew of mostly unknowns fleshes out this stilted view of American snowscapes, Tews himself is the backbone of the entire film. He throws himself into each and every scene, and it almost comes across as if his actual life was on the line given how energetic he can be. There’s a wide-eyed insanity to his physicality that never betrays a genuine beating heart at the center. Much like Wile E. Coyote, Tews’s energy and anarchistic wit comes from a need to survive, which makes the pratfalls and the laughs hit even harder. The rest of the cast fits neatly into a collection of slapstick archetypes, with Mancheski and Graves standing out particularly given their earnestness to slot into these kinds of characters. Mancheski is an easily silly threatening force, and Graves has the classic, Hepburn style beauty that makes it easy to see why Kayak is willing to murder so many woodland creatures for her. 

Despite the fact that the film doesn’t have the seamless effects of something like “Dune Part Two” or “Wicked,” what “Hundreds of Beavers” does have on its side is, once again, energy, heart, and grit. Cheslik serves as the film’s sole editor and visual effects producer, and his work feels like a minor miracle. Whereas some might choose their directorial debut as a small-scale feature to get their feet wet, Cheslik has dived headfirst into the realm of slapstick glory. Not only is there an impressive amount of compositing and green-screen effects, but the practical work is phenomenal as well. Thanks to Tews’s gung-ho performance, each and every hit, trap, slap, and rube-goldberg contraption has the madcap whimsy of a Chuck Jones cartoon. It's the perfect example of a film committing to a style and film language when the budget clearly won’t suffice. That’s where it truly succeeds, as at no point in the 108-minute runtime does that language ever falter from its low-budget black-and-white tendencies. 

A lot of times the independent film industry can come across as a “holier than thou” endeavor, packed with three-hour meditations on life or exercises in the pains of childhood. But at the same time, it's also a breeding ground for works like this. Because while it certainly has a handful of sequences that border on the surrealist and trippy, “Hundreds of Beavers” is also a film that just wants to make you laugh. It’s without a doubt the funniest film of this year so far, and it's hard to see any other movie topping it. There are pieces of comedy from all stylings, and it's a “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” approach that somehow works wonders. Even as it might turn too absurd for some in its final moments, it's over almost directly after, leaving the viewer almost out of breath from laughing as they wonder to themselves what just happened. 

In this day and age, where multi-hundred-million-dollar blockbusters can come out and maintain a shocking level of artistic expression, it's reassuring to know that a film like “Hundreds of Beavers” can even exist. Bold, black and white, absurd, and full of the kind of technical wizardry that can only come from a shoestring budget, if there’s any justice in the world or in Hollywood, then Tews and Cheslik deserve to have a career as long, funny, and absurd as this, their landmark film. And full of just as many beavers. 5/5