Hundreds of Beavers

I will forever respect a movie which not only understands its budgetary limitations, but leans into them, turning a hindrance on creativity into an amplifier for it. There is merit to refusing to compromise your vision, but it can reach a point of vanity and pride that deeply harms the finished product. There are many ways to tell your story effectively, even if the approaches available to you aren’t quite what you had in mind.

Hundreds of Beavers is a fever dream of a slapstick farce, the story of Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) becoming a fur trapper after beavers destroy his applejack distillery. After many wacky misadventures and diversions, he apprentices under the Master Fur Trapper (Wes Tank), angling to become the best in order to win the hand of The Furrier (Olivia Graves). But not before completing one final task for her father, The Merchant (Doug Mancheski): bringing him the hides of hundreds of beavers.

Yeah, yeah, nothing new, I know. But what if I told you that for most of the movie, he’s dressed as a raccoon with a stupendously oversized coonskin cap, complete with Xs over the raccoon’s eyes? And that all the animals are played by humans in costume, a la Jackass or Trigger Happy TV? And that when they’re stabbed, stuffing and felt flies out? And that much of the set is intentionally undisguised green screen and animated elements, often composited together as if paper dolls or video collage?

Oh, and there’s almost no dialog. Just grunts and murmurs and sounds of alarm and yelps of pain and delight. Although one of the few intelligible words spoken is a beaver forcefully shouting “J'accuse!”, so you know they use their quota well.

That is to say, this thing has a visual style like little else. The closest I can come up with from things I’ve seen is Guy Maddin’s Stump the Guesser, but even that’s not a perfect match. It’s clearly well thought out and deliberate, as everything fits together well in the way none of it feels like it belongs anywhere. The tone of all of it is pitched just right, where it’s all completely insane. While clearly compensating for being an indie production, it’s also full of intent. Then again, they also might just like the vibe: writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews previously wrote and directed Lake Michigan Monster, which feels similar visually, although I can only go off the trailer for now.

Comedy-wise, this comes across like a live action cartoon, most directly Looney Toons, combined with the over-exaggerated style of the great silent comedies of the 1910s and 1920s. Again, slapstick is the whole game here. Jean is a buffoon in a cartoon, so constantly getting hurt in ways as comedic as they are absurd. Burrs, woodpeckers, falling out of trees, stumbling into rabbit burrows, flinging himself into the air, and more. The human actors in animal suits work perfectly for this purpose, as I immediately bust a gut upon seeing a bipedal beaver or rabbit kicking someone while they’re down as if a drug hustler teaching someone a lesson.

Much of the humor is fairly sophomoric or “basic”, but it mostly fits the tone, so it’s hard to be too mad. For the first half or so, it relies more on dumb story tropes and frustratingly obvious misunderstandings than I’d have liked. I get they’re trying to keep the story thin so they can focus on the comedy, which is fair. But it leaves it feeling pretty small and mindless, if enjoyably wacky. The story isn’t really serving the comedy, although it’s rarely getting in the way of it. Hell, there aren’t even that many beavers! Lots of rabbits, some raccoons, wolves, dogs, and a single horse, but few flat-tailed rodents in sight.

It’s around here, halfway or maybe two-thirds through, that it begins to hit its stride (and finally slips in its title card). Events get more and more unpredictable, and some of the stranger, less consequential elements of the first part start to find their place. The amount of hard blinks it elicited from me as an involuntary expression of “What in the hell did I just see?” went through the roof. And it’s in this mode that the comedy and cartoon influence really begin to shine. The flexibility afforded by playing in such an artificial sandbox is on full display, such as in an exciting and wondrous journey on a log flume, or in the chase that follows it. The rote nature of the first half gives way to visual and story elements I never could have guessed in a million years in the second. And it works?

Well, kind of. This is one of those films you either get on board with or you don’t. Early on, even as I was rolling my eyes at some of the more obvious jokes and all of the plot points, I was still grinning about how hard they were leaning into it, impressed by their sense of style, and the way the clashing mediums all managed to cohere. Thus, when it morphed into what it would ultimately become, I was open enough to it for the ride to be delightful. So the real question is whether it can keep your attention long enough to turn that corner. If not, you’re gonna have a bad time. But I implore you to give it a chance, because there’s nothing quite like letting Hundreds of Beavers into your heart.