Hundreds of Beavers (2022)

“Hundreds of Beavers, a boldly bizarre, nearly wordless slapstick comedy about a 19th-century trapper doing battle with nature, exceeds expectations in every way, including the promise of its title.” — Matt Zoller Seitz

SYNPOSIS

Imagine Buster Keaton, Chuck Jones, and The Revenant thrown into a blender and you might begin to approximate the inspired lunacy of Mike Cheslik’s Hundreds of Beavers, one of the most inventive independent comedies in recent memory. Ryland Brickson Cole Tews stars as Jean Kayak, a drunken applejack salesman whose livelihood is destroyed by (yep, you guessed it!) beavers, leaving him stranded in a frozen wilderness where survival depends upon mastering the art of trapping an increasingly elaborate menagerie of animals, all played by actors in gloriously ridiculous mascot costumes. Shot in black and white and largely dispensing with dialogue, Cheslik constructs an intricately engineered live-action cartoon from silent-comedy slapstick, video-game logic, handmade effects, and an apparently inexhaustible supply of visual gags, with each absurdly complicated setup building upon everything that came before it. Both a loving excavation of cinema’s oldest comic traditions and something exhilaratingly unlike anything else being made today, Hundreds of Beavers is a triumph of low-budget ingenuity in which imagination, timing, and a complete willingness to look ridiculous prove more valuable than money could ever be.