American comedy has strayed from the light of its forebears. Gone are the days of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers, when jokes and visual surprises flew at the rate of a minute a minute and were matched by the cinematic creativity and physical daring of the authors behind them.
Instead, the genre is littered with similar shows and movies gesture for jokes without ever delivering anything, based more on a comedic atmosphere than on actual punchlines. Outrageous silent comedy by Mike Cheslik Hundreds of Beaversout now on VOD after a limited theatrical run, is here to revive a crucial film genre and bring back silent comedy in a loud, deliriously silly micro-budget experience. It’s the funniest film of 2024, delivering punchline after punchline thanks to its keen understanding of slapstick comedy and cinematic language. It’s the kind of unique movie experience that’s destined to become a cult hit.
From the team behind the 2018 cult black-and-white horror comedy Monster of Lake Michigan (whose poster proudly proclaims it is “Forbidden in Four Lakes!” to give you an idea of the folly at hand), Hundreds of Beavers is a breath of fresh air in cinema, showing how creative a team of talented filmmakers can be on a small budget. (The film used to be reportedly made for just $150,000.)
Best described as “live-action Looney Tunes for adults,” Hundreds of Beavers is a comedy masterclass full of jokes that follows Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews), a fur trapper stranded in the harsh winter of the Great Lakes region and trying to survive. Not only does he have to deal with the environment, but also with wolves, raccoons, other people, and many, many (some might say hundreds) of beavers who view him as a threat that must be removed from their home.
Image: SRH
The animals are a big highlight of the Hundreds of Beavers experience, as most (with a few minor CG exceptions) are played by people in large mascot costumes. It’s a touch of pure comedic genius that makes every scene they’re in funnier, especially since the play is played completely straight. As the story introduces beavers with jobs (beavers in construction uniforms, beaver judges, beaver lawyers, a beaver-Sherlock-and-Watson team that takes on the case to solve the many beaver murders our protagonist has committed, etc.) the joke only bigger and more hilarious.
Those beavers are also a crucial part of survival, as Kayak’s path to success involves trading beaver fur to a local trader. This relationship gives Hundreds of Beavers a video game-like quality – Tews’ trapper works his way up the ladder of the merchant’s wares, first trading a handful of fish for a coin, and then that coin for a knife (complete with a video game-style selection screen in which his purchase is marked), then three pelts for an axe, working up to hundreds of pelts for a wedding ring and the merchant’s daughter’s hand. As he collects pelts to get closer to his goal, a counter will appear on the screen to track his progress.
Image: SRH
Image: SRH
The influences of the video games also appear repeatedly in the trapper’s encounters with the beavers. Kayak must overcome challenges built on top of each other as a series of gags, such as when his makeshift fire keeps getting blown out by gusts of wind that seemingly change direction every time he settles, or a sequence where he repeatedly tries and fails to catch a rabbit with a rope. Both sequences culminate with Kayak using what he has learned from his many failures to generate an outside-the-box solution. He also repeatedly falls down rabbit holes and appears at random places on the other side, an effect similar to Mario walking through his warp pipes.
In another gag, Kayak tries to steal eggs from a bird’s nest, but he can’t help it, and he whistles with joy every time he gets close. Every time he whistles, the bird emerges and pecks him in the face, a hilarious repeated gag that both filmmaker and character can use in unexpected ways. Cheslik and the team communicate the story without words, using many of the old tricks of silent filmmaking to keep viewers engaged and following the very silly story through clever, on-point editing and off-kilter visuals.
In another video game-inspired touch, Kayak draws a map of his surroundings and meets a companion who has his own map, complete with an ace card reminiscent of games like Pokémon: rabbits are attracted to carrots, skunks to frogs, dogs to squirrels , and beavers to poop. As he continues his journey, he can add his own knowledge to this diagram. Within the unbridled and joyful chaos of Hundreds of Beavers (including some dogs literally playing poker), there’s a consistent logic to the way the world and characters work, which helps provide grounding in an otherwise unhinged cartoonish world.
Image: SRH
Image: SRH
Surprisingly for a stupid black and white comedy made on an extremely low budget, one of Hundreds of BeaversThe most impressive aspect is the use of visual effects. Cheslik also created the visual effects for the film, and he infuses the otherwise simple setting with surreal backgrounds and animated designs that make the action feel more cartoonish, like in the opening scene, where our protagonist gets absolutely confused during Applejack with a group of animated fellow drinkers, before beavers spoil the fun and leave the lead on a giant rolling barrel of applejack as it plummets towards destruction. The film is peppered with these animated embellishments, adding to the Looney Tunes feel and contradict conventional thinking about what VFX should look realistic to be effective. Hundreds of Beavers proves that the opposite can be true.
Image: SRH
Image: SRH
Image: SRH
Sticking too close to realism can leave characters in the uncanny valley. But try to deliberately create something that doesn’t look real, and you’re much more likely to succeed. You can see it on the grandest scale in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where realistic environments and people are recreated with computer-generated visual effects only to fall flat (as in Spider-Man: No way home), but more fantastic efforts, such as in the Doctor Strange filmsare more effective because they try not to simulate reality.
Hundreds of Beavers is clearly indebted to the silent cinema of greats such as Chaplin, Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Tews (who co-wrote the film with Cheslik) gives a wonderfully expressive performance as a total doofus scheming against a pack of beavers, and as Chris Plante put it in his article for our list of the best films of 2024, “it’s small cast would float comfortably in Adult Swim’s pool of lovable oddballs.
By not using dialogue or other conventional tools to advance the plot, the team is forced to rely on old-fashioned visual storytelling, counting on the audience to follow along with their Looney Tunes-esque gags. The physical comedy takes Cheslik’s specific homages to classic silent cinema to a higher level. But you don’t have to be a film scholar or even a fan of silent comedy to appreciate this Hundreds of Beavers. That’s the crazy joy of this project – while its foundations are firmly rooted in the classics of the genre and medium, at its core it’s a laugh-out-loud thrill ride about a very silly person on a very silly quest. Sometimes that’s exactly what the doctor ordered.
Hundreds of Beavers is available for digital purchase or rental on Amazon and Apple.