Hundreds of Beavers
Directed by Mike Cheslik
Written by Mike Cheslik, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews
Starring Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Olivia Graves
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour, 48 minutes
Available to watch on Apple TV via FilmHub and Prime, debuts April 19 exclusively on Fandor

by Gena Radcliffe, Staff Writer

Folks, we’ve had a good run of movies these past few years. Some of our most acclaimed filmmakers have released their best work, while at the same time new directors are on the rise with fresh and exciting viewpoints and ideas. We need to enjoy it while it lasts, however, because due to last year’s extended Screen Actors and Writers Guild strikes, we’re heading towards a gap in quality, probably early next year. That gap will likely be filled with tiresome sequels, reboots, and cash grabs, churned out at top speed and sacrificing quality for content.

Knowing that, we must praise and treasure genuine creative gems like Mike Cheslik’s Hundreds of Beavers.

Rarely does a movie live up to its trailer, but Hundreds of Beavers does. You may watch the trailer and think “Surely it can’t be just this for ninety minutes,” but it is, and it’s delightful. This low-budget ($150,000!!) wonder manages to entertain its audience more than any comic book movie has over the last five years.

We open with an extended prologue depicting the rise and fall of Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews), who manufactures and sells applejack in the wild, barely charted woods of Wisconsin. Jean spends too much time nipping at his own supply, however, and during an extended bender his business falls apart, its destruction hastened by some industrious human-sized beavers. Now penniless and hungry, Jean must hunt for food, setting up a series of Elmer Fudd-like traps that often backfire on him, thanks to the wily animals he’s trying to capture. The beavers are particularly slick, and take malevolent glee in watching Jean narrowly escape grievous injury (or even death) over and over.

Jean tries trapping and selling furs to a local trader to earn some money, and falls for a merchant’s daughter (Olivia Graves), who flirts with Jean by skinning and gutting a raccoon right in front of him. When Jean asks to marry her, however, her stern father demands a steep dowry: the furs of…well, you can probably figure that out.

Beyond the whimsical practical effects, and the fact that not a single word of dialogue is spoken other than occasional grunts and shouts, the real miracle of Hundreds of Beavers is that this extremely simple plot successfully carries an entire feature-length film. True, many of the gags (including one involving an aggressive woodpecker, and another one involving poop) are repetitious, and if you’re not a fan of people running into things or repeatedly getting hit in the head you’ll probably want to take a pass on this. Nevertheless, there’s an infectious joyfulness to the whole thing. Jokes aren’t repeated out of laziness on the filmmaker’s part, but because they’re funny, and in service to a deliriously over-the-top climax that borrows liberally from both Modern Times and Voltron. It’s impossible not to love.

Much of the success of Hundreds of Beavers should be attributed to Tews, who co-wrote the script and gives the most committed, enthusiastic comic performance I’ve seen in a long time. Buster Keaton crossed with Wile E. Coyote, Jean Kayak is either as clever or as dumb as the plot needs him to be at a particular time, and Tews brings tremendous energy to every scene he’s in (which is all of them, there’s only four other characters). Credit must go to director/co-writer Cheslik, of course, not to mention the crew members who were challenged with wearing bunny or beaver costumes and going up against Tews. But I also can’t overlook Mike Wesolowski (credited here as “Gag Man”) whose creation and implementation of dozens of vintage cartoon-style sight gags make this not just a fun movie, but a unique one.

Undoubtedly, now that it’s about to become available on streaming, it’ll be a matter of hours before we encounter the first “Am I the only one who…” post about Hundreds of Beavers. Maybe it’ll end up being one of those movies where you had to get in on it at the ground floor to really appreciate it, and audiences coming to it later will end up disappointed. Or hopefully it’ll end up a cult classic, as it deserves. Either way, as things start to slow down creatively in Hollywood, it’ll still be something we can point to as proof that better things are possible, as long as there’s love and enthusiasm involved.