‘Hundreds of Beavers’ Review – A Refreshingly Bonkers Action Comedy
Chris Sawin
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Boy, with a title like that, you know you’re in for something even if you don’t know what. Hundreds of Beavers is a black-and-white comedy that is mostly silent and opens with a full-on musical number, but that’s only the beginning.
The story follows an applejack salesman named Jean Kayak (co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews – the real name of one person) who gets drunk and destroys an ACME cider brewery.
Waking up in cold weather, he attempts to hunt various forest wildlife as a food source when he encounters a fur trapper and adapts his ways just as an all-out war with – you guessed it – “hundreds of beavers” truly becomes inevitable.
Regardless of the action and bombast the plot suggests, this is a pretty terse film. Dialogue is mostly short one-word statements such as “Oh” and “Mhm.” The film, however, is overflowing with sound effects, and what sounds like an orchestra provides the background music, completing the Silly Symphony-like ambiance.
Labeled a ‘silent supernatural epic,’ Hundreds of Beavers was fundraised and shot in Wisconsin and Michigan, taking four years to complete and over 12 weeks to shoot in subzero temperatures. All told, the film features over 1500 unique effect shots.
The humor in the film is heavy slapstick heaven embraces that unnatural and rubbery look of green-screen shots and cheap visual effects. Nearly all animals are people in costumes other than a puppet fish in an homage to classic animation that works way better than it should.
The creativity in Hundreds of Beavers is gushing with highly imaginative gags such as a funny spin on luring male rabbits with female snow rabbits (complete with oversized snowball boobs).
There is also an attempt to use an oversized snowball as a bowling ball to catch a rabbit and a hole/tunnel gag directly referencing Bugs Bunny and the portable hole Wile E. Coyote utilized. Animals turn into delicious foods, along with the constant failure punctuated by being kicked and beaten down by a flurry of wooded creatures.
The film’s ending takes place in a beaver dam as you might expect. The special effects and everything the Hundreds of Beavers team delivers during this finale are refreshingly bonkers. All of the gadgets dealing with wood popping up while Jean sneaks around trying to avoid the titular critters is a visual spectacle so unique, that I have trouble comparing it to anything.
Following that is a Jean-versus-Beaver melee that is so dumb that it’s ridiculous fun. Case in point, dummies are used when Jean or a beaver is thrown against a wall, through a table, or across the room. And they don’t try to hide it.
Sometimes, it’s a smooth transition, and sometimes, it is preposterously noticeable. It’s all purely for comedic effect down to the makeup and prosthetics like the character of a mountain man and his obvious fake, but amusing, beard.
About that plot…while Hundreds of Beavers is genuinely marvelous as a live-action adaptation of animated tactics that harken back to our childhoods, the storytelling is all over the place. The film fully invests in its cartoony gags, and essentially, everything else is secondary.
Jean Kayak gets drunk and tries to live in the snow with his failed hunting attempts. Give or take a few twists and turns, that sums up the whole narrative. He becomes a fur trapper, falls down a hole, and meets the aforementioned mountain man (Wes Tank). The fur trapping goes on for a while as Jean builds up his fur trail.
He then meets a merchant (Doug Mancheski) who exchanges fur for weapons and supplies. The merchant’s daughter works as a furrier (Olivia Graves), Jean falls in love with her, and the merchant exclaims that Jean can’t marry her unless he brings him the furs of… yup, “hundreds of beavers.”
As a fan of Looney Tunes and any other form of seven-minute cartoon shorts, this feels like twenty animated shorts slapped together for an hour-and-48-minute runtime. Visually and comedically speaking, the film is a knockout.
It is a concept that is a good idea on paper and borderline idiotic genius in execution, but the narrative takes a left turn at Albuquerque and never looks back. The lack of something coherent is disappointing.
However, the delightfully chaotic special effects, ridiculously amusing humor, and overwhelming passion and admiration for vintage Warner tomfoolery make Hundreds of Beavers one remarkable excursion into a wacky winter war zone you won’t soon forget.
NEXT: ‘She Is Conann’ Review – A Ferocious Plunge Into Shiny, Flesh-Eating Fantasy
Hundres of Beavers
PROS
- Laugh out loud humor.
- Consistent creativity in its visual gags.
- Wacky special effects that work.
CONS
- The story is all over the place.
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