✯✯✯✯½

The often repeated phrase “they don’t make them like they used to” gets flung around a lot, but while watching Hundreds of Beavers I also couldn’t think of a more appropriate phrase to describe what it feels like to be watching something of this variety being made today. Because when was the last time you saw a silent slapstick comedy being made? Perhaps the last time I could really think of another film of this sort was the days of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, but even then, I also couldn’t help but think of all those classic Wile E. Coyote cartoons while watching Hundreds of Beavers. Such commitment to a bit nowadays is highly commendable, as they really don’t make them like they used to.

Hundreds of Beavers is a film with a very simple aim: it’s set in the nineteenth century and tells us the story of Jena Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews), an applejack salesman whose farm gets inadvertently destroyed by a beaver. Then that ends up sending him on another adventure, where he’s now found himself in love with a merchant’s daughter – thus only fueling his feud with the beavers all the more as he sets out to become a trapper. And the gimmick itself is rather simple, this whole movie is played out like it were a live action cartoon – making usage of the notion that film is a visual medium in the most clever manner.

That’s all one really needs to know to get an idea of what they’re seeing in Hundreds of Beavers. You have some of the funniest visual gags ever constructed, all thanks to how Mike Cheslik is committed to recreating the same manic energy of a Buster Keaton comedy, even recreating that aesthetic so seamlessly. That there are filmmakers who are willing to bring viewers back to such a time period is commendable enough on its own, but seeing how Cheslik assembles it all is something else entirely: Hundreds of Beavers plays up the absurdity to more elaborate degrees as it goes on. In a lesser filmmaker’s hands, this could easily feel like one bit going on for far too long. But that commitment to the bit is just remarkable.

Comparisons are going to be made to a live action cartoon, because there’s only so much that these filmmakers can do with an extremely limited budget and an absurd number of beaver mascot costumes. But Cheslik’s influences don’t stop at silent comedy films or Looney Tunes cartoons, they’re also stretching themselves into the realm of video games because of how every moment of Hundreds of Beavers progresses to the next. And as the set pieces just grow more absurd as they go on, it’s near impossible to not be in awe as you watch several hundreds of actors wear beaver costumes finding increasingly violent ways to beat a fur trapper.

But the joys don’t stop there either. They just keep building up all the more, going places where you would never expect. It’s so unabashedly silly and weird, the thought that something of this sort was accomplished with relative ease is monumental. And to see how Cheslik lets everything grow to such insane degrees would only speak to the ambitiousness of such an endeavour. But it just simply works. It works because Hundreds of Beavers doesn’t ever try to stray away from this ridiculous commitment, instead it just feels like this whole endeavour just gets more creative the more it goes on. And everyone behind the camera certainly knows that this is going to get ridiculous, but it’s everything that we’d want out of a film with this premise: even down to the point it has a group of beavers recreating J’accuse!. And it just works.

Every moment of this movie is ridiculous. But that’s also why it’s such a thrill. Hundreds of Beavers may be among the funniest movies of the decade, not by nature of it being consistently laugh-out-loud. Instead, it’s like being transported to a bygone era of cinema. And it’s every bit as creative as that period by which it’s trying to bring you back to. What Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews have achieved with Hundreds of Beavers is the answer to “they don’t make them like they used to,” by going back to making them like they used to after all. You won’t find anything else quite like this coming in a very long time.

Watch the trailer right here.

All images via SRH.

Directed by Mike Cheslik
Screenplay by Mike Cheslik, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews
Produced by Kurt Ravenwood, Matt Sabljak, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Sam Hogerton
Starring Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Olivia Graves, Wes Tank, Doug Mancheski, Luis Ruci
Premiere Date: September 29, 2022
Running Time: 108 minutes