Director: Mike Cheslik
Writers: Mike Cheslik, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews
Stars: Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Olivia Graves, Doug Mancheski
Synopsis: In this 19th century, supernatural winter epic, a drunken applejack salesman must go from zero to hero and become North America’s greatest fur trapper by defeating hundreds of beavers.
When you watch a lot of movies, like literally thousands of movies, you sometimes feel like you have seen it all. You’ve heard this before. There are only seven types of stories. This is derivative of that. Show, don’t tell. Style over substance. Pick your cliché. It’s not that these things cannot be true, it is that they can be severely limiting and box us in as viewers. But every great once in a while, something wholly original comes along to shake things up. And this year, that experience has arrived. I promise you that you have never seen anything like Hundreds of Beavers, and god bless it for being completely itself.
With a title like that, you might assume that Hundreds of Beavers is infantile, silly nonsense. You would be both wrong and right. After all, this is a movie featuring people in beaver costumes, sometimes attacking humans and sometimes chewing through wood, like you do. But, this should not be a movie that you dismiss out of hand. The plot follows Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews), who is a successful applejack (an alcoholic beverage made from apples) salesman, whose orchard is destroyed by a rogue beaver chewing through the legs a giant keg. That keg goes rolling down the hill, demolishing everything in its path. All of this occurs before the opening credits and sets the stage for the type of movie it is perfectly. There is basically no dialogue, everything feels handcrafted, and the focus is on humor, with touches of drama. Think 1920s-1930s silent, slapstick comedy with a relatively modern sensibility.
There is no way this should work. You might think that the schtick would wear thin, but director Mike Cheslik has a firm grasp on exactly how long each bit should last, aided by a lovely screenplay, from Cheslik and Brickson Cole Tews. As the story continues, Jean Kayak reawakens in the winter, without a penny to his name. He attempts to hunt for food, repeatedly failing in increasingly spectacular ways. Eventually, he injures himself and is taken in by trappers, who teach him their trade. After the trappers perish in a both funny and haunting sequence, Kayak starts his own path using his learned trade and this is where the film could have gone horribly awry.
As he has finally learned to trap some animals, he travels to a merchant to sell. There, he meets the merchant’s daughter (Olivia Graves). Despite the lack of dialogue, there is an immediate romantic connection and both actors should be commended on their performances. Sadly, her father demands, you guessed it, hundreds of beaver pelts as a sort of dowry for his blessing on their union. The scenes in which she teaches Jean how to remove the fur and innards of the animals is oddly romantic. There is no gore here, this is all managed in slapstick style and is completely endearing. But honestly, this relationship carries the film.
There are, of course, many more joys in Hundreds of Beavers yet to come. A duo of beavers investigating Jean’s traps, repeated failures from Jean leading to enormous success, dozens of beavers combining into an almost Voltron like figure to chase down the humans, the list goes on and on. There is never a dull moment here, but it is not just madcap hilarity. Don’t get me wrong, it has many belly clutching moments of humor, but the humanity is what carries it through. Somehow, some way, I found myself actively rooting for Jean and his lady love, and by the time the film comes to fruition, I challenge you not to leave with a gigantic smile on your face.
Hundreds of Beavers is an absolute gem and we are lucky to experience it. In terms of creation, it is also an honest-to-god inspiration. The idea for this film began in 2018 and was created almost solely by Cheslik and Brickson Cole Tews. The process was lengthy, and they even chose to distribute the film themselves. And, from this reviewer’s perspective, it was all worth it. Against all possible odds, the tandem created a funny, touching, romantic, action-packed, original film. Hundreds of Beavers could not be more worth your time.