Hundreds Of Beavers

Beaver Pitch

Hundreds Of Beavers
USA 2022
Directed by Mike Cheslik
FilmHub

Warning: The whole format and brilliance of the movie is a spoiler in itself... just watch the damned movie and then maybe head on back here after you’ve seen it.

Although it’s got a 2022 copyright date on it, Hundreds Of Beavers has been playing and wowing the festival circuit for a couple of years now and so it didn’t get a proper cinema release in this or other countries until earlier this year (which, hooray, means I can include it in my ‘last year’s best movies list’ in January 2025). It was on my radar and I wanted to see it, even though I’m not the biggest fan of slapstick humour... but it played hardly any cinemas over here at all and practically nobody over here in the UK has even heard of it. Which is a shame since it’s absolutely an amazing and almost unique cinematic experience.

Okay, so the film stars Ryland Brickson Cole Tews as Jean Kayak, aka Apple Jack in the pre-credits sequence. Well, I say pre-credits sequence but they don’t start rolling until just over half an hour into the movie and the title of the film itself doesn’t hit the screen until two thirds of the way in. Anyway, after accidentally destroying his thriving cider trade, partially to do with some beavers eating things they shouldn’t and partially to do with him being quite drunk... he’s left in the wilderness with just himself in the snow trying to survive. And also trying to catch something to eat like a rabbit or, you know, a beaver.

It’s at this point that I should probably add that the film is a blend of live action and animation, in stonking black and white, has barely any dialogue in it at all and that all the animal parts are either puppets or, for the most part, men dressed up in rabbit, beaver, wolf and horse costumes. So hold onto that thought for a minute...

The film immediately turns into a brilliant parody of old roadrunner cartoons, with the beavers/rabbits etc as the roadrunner and Jean as Wiley Coyote. And while there are a few steals from silent comedy and many Looney Toons cartoons, I’d have to say that a lot of the ‘familiar’ gags are new or at least done in different ways. Either way... the film is incredibly inventive and witty and, even though the central character is killing as many beavers as possible... he will totally have your sympathy and you will want him to succeed in his mission.

So, I’d have to say if someone told me I’d have to sit through almost two hours of silent cartoon homage, I’d be pretty put out by the prospect. But, amazingly, this film never gets dull and the story manages to keep finding new ways to develop and hold the interest. I never once got bored in this one, for sure. For instance, when he comes across a beaver fur trader and his beautiful daughter (played wonderfully by Olivia Graves) in a cabin in the wilderness, Jean has to try to keep bringing back beavers with various coins which can be converted into goods as rewards, as he works up to what the proprietor’s price is for the hand of his daughter in marriage... which is, of course, Hundreds Of Beavers. So yeah, Jean becomes a trapper.

As the film goes along we get more and more inventive traps (quite often that’s also all the more to backfire on the trapper), we get a whole host of ideas thrown at the audience in more and more hilarious ways such as... a giant fortress constructed by the beavers from which to mount their ‘special project’, Holmes and Watson beavers, a giant man made up of many beavers walking along in formation and... well, as the saying goes... much, much more.

And, honestly, I can’t recommend this one enough. The music in this is great too, some of it original songs and some of it an old friend I’ve not heard from of late in modern movies... the old De Wolf Music Library... I had no idea these people were still supplying modern movie makers with needle drop scores for their projects!

Anyway, that’s me about done on Hundreds Of Beavers, not because I haven’t got anything else to say but because to say much more than this would be to spoil it somewhat. What I will say further, though, is that at some point about half way through the movie, I began to question what the heck I was watching... I did so with a big grin on my face (well, as near as a grin as I get) and I’m still questioning it now. But in a good way, for sure.