‘Hundreds of Beavers’ Review: Slapstick Reinvented for a Modern Audience

At first glance, “Hundreds of Beavers” is exactly what its title suggests. At the start of the film, hundreds of beavers invade an apple orchard and cider distillery, destroying Jean Kayak’s (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) life’s work and forcing him to take up the mantle of fur trapper extraordinaire.

Kayak is not your run-of-the-mill protagonist — he is a clumsy drunk with nothing to live for. He has no family, his friends have left him, and about five minutes into the story, everything he’s ever known and loved goes up in flames. However, he is a man seeking vengeance — and it turns out he’s not the only one on the hunt for beavers. Early in Kayak’s journey, he meets the merchant (Doug Mancheski) and the master fur trapper (Wes Tank), who sends him on a convoluted path of beaver destruction.

The merchant’s trading post feels straight out of a Nintendo video game, where Kayak is able to trade coins and pelts for gadgets and gizmos. Upbeat music and sound effects accompany all of Kayak’s interactions with the merchant — a crude and reckless man who misses his spitoon without fail in one of the film’s many clever recurring gags. The master fur trapper, on the other hand, is more distinguished. He has captured dozens of beavers with meticulous traps devised over many years. He also looks like a rough-and-tumble Santa Claus who mushes a pack of sled dogs in lieu of reindeers.

Offbeat references — like “The Legend of Zelda” and Old Saint Nicholas — make up a good chunk of the film’s more sophisticated gags. For example, beavers conspicuously dressed as Holmes and Watson investigate the series of murders that Kayak has perpetrated — comically misinterpreting the bizarre snow imprints his victims have left. The film also pays homage to the popular “Dogs Playing Poker” paintings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The master fur trapper’s sled dogs play cards every night — until, that is, their population dwindles to one dog, who is resigned to playing solitaire alone.

“Hundreds of Beavers” encompasses just about every genre under the sun, whether it be Keatonian slapstick, musical comedy, action and adventure, gritty film noir, courtroom drama, sci-fi, monster, romance, or some warped amalgamation of each. Irreverent blending of classic tropes keep the film — mostly without dialogue or complex story beats — consistently entertaining. One moment Kayak is watching his true love perform a pole dance, while the next he is preventing beavers from launching a rocket into the stratosphere.

It is often said that good movies do not feel like movies, because the audience loses themselves in the seamless filmmaking. “Hundreds of Beavers,” however, does not ask its audience to suspend their disbelief. Rather, it puts its audience in a constant state of disbelief.

Like Kayak’s weapon of choice, the film snowballs without ever failing to outdo itself. It begins rather humbly, as Kayak attempts to trap beavers with rudimentary set-ups that fail time and time again. Even when he successfully captures a beaver, raccoons eat it up before he even has a chance to harvest it. Kayak also must contend with blood-hungry wolves and stinky skunks — which are dressed in the same cheap mascot costumes that serve as a basis of the film’s goofball comedy.

There is a turning point, though — when Kayak goes from clumsy drunk to the second coming of Rambo. His elaborate traps defy the laws of physics and kill beavers in droves. He even holds his own in brawls with dozens of beavers at a time — masterfully choreographed to mimic the Hong Kong action flicks of the 1980s.

Don’t let the cheap mascot costumes fool you: “Hundreds of Beavers” is a groundbreaking technical achievement. Almost every shot contains a complex animation of some sort, and not one of these shots seems unfinished or underdeveloped — the same cannot be said for many modern big-budget blockbusters. In the hands of director and editor Mike Cheslik, each visual gag feels hand-crafted and deliberate.

The same can be said about the film’s story. Every moment — whether the audience knows it or not — subtly lays the foundation for a finale that must be seen to be believed. In what might be one of the most bonkers climaxes in cinema history, “Hundreds of Beavers” batters the audience with endless, absurd confrontations underpinned by endless, absurd jokes. What starts as a low-key tragedy about a deadbeat loser becomes a high-stakes epic about a veteran fighter.

Every frame of “Hundreds of Beavers” is bursting with boundless energy, with each moment more surprising than the last. By the end, it can be hard to breathe from laughing so hard for so long.

—Staff writer Joseph A. Johnson can be reached at joseph.johnson@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @onlyjoejohnson or on Threads @officialjoeyj.