As animation has become a more respected artform over the years it feels like the days of silly, slapstick shorts have passed. Children's television has become more advanced and ambitious, with shows that often rivel 'adult' entertainment for how engaging and creative it is. Even things like the old Road Runner cartoons and the more violent Tom and Jerry shorts have evolved into completely different shows. I mention these two in particular as they're probably the closest to what Hundreds of Beavers is trying to capture, having created a live action cartoon, with silly visual gags, weird physics, and the kind of violence that should lead to death a dozen times over but just leaves characters rubbing the lump on their head.
Hundreds of Beavers begins with a cider make, Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) who sees his business and home burn to the ground, leaving him to survive in the show covered wilderness with nothing but the clothes on his back and his own wits to get by. However, his wits can sometimes be a bit lacking, especially when the local wildlife are smart, and aren't afraid to go the extra mile to make Jean's day worse. As Jean tries to get by he meets an expert fur trapper, a mean local merchant, and a beautiful young furrier who he falls in love with. But will Jean be able to outwit the crafty local beavers and win her hand in marriage?
Made like a silent movie, though without the speech cards on screen, Hundreds of Beavers feels like a blend of the early days of slapstick, stunt filled cinema, with the work of Loony Tunes. Our protagonist spends his time wandering through a beautiful, snow covered wilderness, a location that is part real and part created as we have fake trees and cartoon snowmen pop up from time to time. The blend of reality and the fake is somewhat unnerving to begin with, but thankfully, the film's approach to its animal co-stars helps you to find your feet in this tonally weird affair.
The animals that inhabit the world, ranging from fish, to wolves, and the titular beavers, are either puppets, or people in animal costumes; and not very convincing ones at that. There are times where the film looks like a bad sport mascot convention, thanks to the fact that the filmmakers bought a load of cheap mascot suits in order to populate the movie. But instead of feeling cheap or silly it grounds the film in a weird way, it makes you realise that despite this being real people it is very much in the realm of an animated movie. Things don't make sense, there are leaps in logic, physics take a back seat a lot of the time, and you find yourself watching a story that could never come close to being real. And it's kind of a delight to slip into this child-like feeling as you just say 'okay, whatever' and sink into the story, letting it take you on this wild ride.
It helps that the film is genuinely funny too. There's a mixture of humour, and not all of it landed for me, but I think that that's a taste thing more than anything else. The film is filled to the brim with visual gags, and you often have to suspend your feelings of disbelief as a character does something that your brain has trained you not to think possible. For me, the best gags were the ones that come with a cut. There are a number of times in the film where the movie is setting up a joke, or making you think something different is about to happen, before it hard cuts to a punchline that takes you by surprise. These moments elicited the biggest laughs out of me, and some of them included a dark joke or two too, which definitely won me over.
Hundreds of Beavers is a weird movie, it has little to no dialogue, is presented in black and white, looks faker than anything else I've ever seen, but because it's leaning into that, because it seems to know it needs to look cheap and ridiculous so as not to completely lose the views and is just going for it you can't help but overlook a lot of faults. The performances are great, with over-the-top exaggerated characters and weird personalities that the cast brings to life wonderfully. Playing like the cartoons of old, Hundreds of Beavers feels like a throwback to a type of film that's been utterly gone for many, many years, and it's lovely to slip back into that here. Whilst it is a bit dark at times, the film is never cruel or nasty, and as such feels like the kind of movie the entire family can watch together and get a good laugh out of.
A lot of low budget, independent films get hailed as imaginative, or visionary yet fail to really live up to that hype, but Hundreds of Beavers feels like it does. It's trying something different, it's going against the trends of the big studios and the creators are making something that they're going to like. More films should be like this, absolutely weird little movies that clearly has a ton of love poured into it because it's something the filmmaker wants to see on the screen; the fact that the rest of us get to enjoy it too is just a bonus. It's not everyday a film like this comes along.
Hundreds of Beavers is released in UK cinema on 9th July 2024.
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