By It’s easy to say that comedy is dead. Comedy, like most things in the world, is highly polarized to the point where people are afraid of saying anything that could possibly be misconstrued out of context or offend someone. Because of that, I find that whenever comedy is included in movies nowadays, it’s always middle-of-the-road and as inoffensive as possible. Fourth wall breaks. Quips. Random improv. These are the jokes most movies are content with featuring since they’re not only the safest, but the easiest jokes to make. I’m not saying that makes them bad, but they can become tiring when they’re the one type of joke being told.
Comedy is risky. If a joke fails, then a joke fails, and trying to explain why it’s funny will only defeat the purpose. It takes a genuine talent to make something that is consistently funny and can make anyone and everyone laugh. Sadly, those talents feel all the more rare as comedians are content with taking the safe and easy way out. But then you get bizarre comedies like Hundreds of Beavers that remind you that comedy isn’t dead and people are willing to make insane spectacles for us to point and laugh at. You just have to know where to look.
Hundreds of Beavers
Director: Mike Cheslik
Release Date: April 15, 2024 (VOD), July 22, 2024 (Digital)
Coming to us from the director of Lake Michigan Monster, Hundreds of Beavers is a pretty simple movie. The film follows an applejack salesman, played by Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, as he attempts to survive the cold Michigan winter after beavers have destroyed his farm. He eventually becomes a fur trapper and tries to win over the heart of a merchant’s daughter, played by Olivia Graves, but is unable to do so unless he captures hundreds of beavers for him. Hence the title. These beavers are crafty little creatures though, so our intrepid hunter will have to get creative in killing them to have a shot at marrying the woman of his dreams.
Right from the get-go, I was instantly enamored by just how different Hundreds of Beavers is compared to most modern comedies. I don’t mean in terms of presentation, although the film is very unconventional with its presentation. What I mean is that, for a movie with a six-figure budget, it leans into its cheap aesthetics in a way that feels like a fever dream. Every animal in the movie is either a puppet or a person walking around in a mascot suit and the movie never once questions this. It looks ridiculous, but it lends well to the slapstick comedy that Hundreds of Beavers hitches its horse to.
From the film’s black-and-white aesthetics to the extreme physical comedy, it’s not hard to draw a connection to comedies from legends like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Abbott & Costello. The jokes are quick and aggressive, lasting just long enough to let the impact of each hit, punchline, and even death make you laugh before moving on to something else. There’s even a little bit of inspiration traced back to Monty Python with the film’s usage of animation towards the end and using green screens to make the cheapest yet funniest imagery possible. Plus as a silent film, there’s not a single line of dialogue uttered, putting most of the humor on Tews’ physicality and facial expressions, which helps to sell the jokes even more.
That’s all well and good stylistically, but the most important question with Hundreds of Beavers is “Is it funny?” The answer is yes. Uproariously so. I laughed my ass off watching this. I don’t mean I chuckled at a few jokes every now and then or smirked at some of the sequences. No, I was laughing hysterically at times to the point where I had tears in my eyes. Some moments in this movie are so ridiculous that they transcend into a realm of stupidity and then circle back around to being clever. It’s as if someone had a dumb idea and Tews wondered how they could make it dumber, and went ahead and put it in on film and put their heart and soul into making it as ridiculous as possible.
You have to respect a movie that does not even attempt to take itself seriously. Everything is in service of some joke and even when a sequence feels pointless, it will eventually circle back around to being a joke. Just when you think a joke has run its course, the film finds a way to put a new spin on it that makes it even funnier than before. One of my favorite sequences involved a group of dogs at night playing with each other, but as more and more dogs begin to die, the games they play at night just keep getting funnier somehow but in a sad kind of way. And that’s before the film really gets into the nitty gritty of how our hero can trap hundreds of beavers for his marriage proposal.
The film is broken down into three parts, each with its own clear little arc and purpose. The first arc has our hero trying to survive the frigid wilderness, then we have him learn how to trap and hunt the various animals of the woods, until finally, he launches a full-on assault on the beaver stronghold that’s been built since the beginning of the film. While there are running gags, each of these arcs also introduces its own unique brand of humor. Case in point, towards the end of the movie, we’re treated to a court case where, without even having a single line of dialogue, I could tell that one of the beavers through physicality alone was just a simple southern lawyer, which made the trial all the funnier to me.
Even when the pacing feels a bit slow in the second part, where we witness the fur trapper wander around in a circle visiting each of his traps, it all does lead to some kind of a joke that comes together in a way that’s surprisingly clever in its execution. I’m frankly stunned that a movie this simple could be this funny, but that’s kind of the brilliance of Hundreds of Beavers. Yes, it does try to have safe and universal humor, but it doesn’t even attempt to engage with your brain. It simply wants to make the audience laugh by any means necessary, physics and logic be damned, almost like a cartoon. To that, I applaud Hundreds of Beavers. People don’t need to think to enjoy this movie. They just need to be open to seeing something that isn’t afraid to make a fool out of itself.
I always hate writing about comedies here because even hinting at some of the jokes would ruin them, but take it from me when I said that I laughed more at Hundreds of Beavers than I did at any movie all year. It’s a testament to low-budget filmmaking how something as unhinged and niche as Hundreds of Beavers can be as funny as it is. This definitely isn’t a movie for everyone, but for those who are willing to just sit back and watch a crazy fur trapper hunt a bunch of people in beaver costumes, then you’ll find one of the best and most creative comedies of the year. Pay attention to Mike Cheslik and whatever he does next. He’s one to watch.
