Hundreds of Beavers is a 2022 American slapstickcomedy film directed by Mike Cheslik and written by Cheslik and Ryland . It was inspired by the slapstick comedy of 1920s and 1930s artists. The film stars Tews as an applejack maker in a conflict with beavers, trying to win the hand of a merchant's daughter.[3][4]
Cheslik and Tews, who previously collaborated on multiple projects, developed the idea for Hundreds of Beavers in October 2018. The film was shot in rural Wisconsin and Michigan across twelve weeks in the winter of 2019 and 2020. Editing and post-production was completed by 2022.
Hundreds of Beavers premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 29, 2022, and has received critical acclaim. The film was self-distributed and received a video on demand release on April 15, 2024.
Plot
Successful 19th century applejack salesman Jean Kayak has his orchard destroyed when a beaver eats one of the support beams of a giant keg, which rolls into his fireplace and explodes. Jean awakens in winter, repeatedly failing to catch food. He finds a group of beavers collecting logs to build a structure and attacks a pair, but is easily beaten by them. He catches fish by making his fingers bleed and using them as lures, and when he sells the fish to a local merchant, he notices a fur trapper turning an immense profit.
Jean buys a knife and cuts his shirt into rope. When he realizes the rabbits use a tunnel system, he rigs an exit with the rope and lures them into it, but raccoons eat his catches before he can get to them. He cuts up his pants to hoist the rabbits in the air and out of their reach. Jean catches a raccoon and runs into a Native American, who trades him snowshoes for the knife, and the merchant's daughter skins the raccoon and makes it into clothing for Jean.
Jean breaks his leg when he falls into a pit made by the trapper, who rescues him and takes him on as his protégé. Wolves start killing the trapper's dogs, and when the pack attacks in full, the trapper gives Jean his trapping guide before being killed. Jean erases it and starts a new guide as he begins to master the area, finding creative ways to trap the area's animals, selling them to the merchant and trading with the Native for better gear. He and the merchant's daughter develop a mutual attraction, but the merchant demands hundreds of beavers for her hand in marriage. A pair of beavers styled after Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson begin investigating Jean's traps.
Jean realizes the wolves in the area are hoarding the trapper's large collection of beaver carcasses. When the detectives report back to the beavers, who have built a massive dam, they send a large squadron after Jean. He lures them into the wolf cave and seals the entrance with icicles, allowing the wolves to slaughter them. He brings the bodies back to the merchant's cabin, only for it to be a cardboard cutout made by the detectives, who take the bodies to be buried.
Jean sneaks into the dam, but is eventually caught and put on trial for his beaver killing. He is found guilty and set to be skinned and made into a coat, the same thing having happened to the trapper. Jean narrowly escapes his restraints and beats up the group trying to kill him. While trying to escape, he notices the beavers building a rocket ship out of one of his kegs. He accidentally pushes a beaver into it, causing it to malfunction and launch in the wrong direction, breaking the dam and creating the Green Bay with the flood.
Jean rolls the bundle of beaver bodies into a snowball, which he rides as the beavers climb on top of each other to form a giant figure and chase him. The Native latches onto the rocket with a grappling arrow and launches it at the beavers, destroying the figure. The snowball of hundreds of beaver pelts stops at the merchant's cabin, and Jean is allowed to marry the daughter.
Cast
Ryland Brickson Cole Tews as Jean Kayak
Olivia Graves as The Furrier
Wes Tank as The Master Fur Trapper
Doug Mancheski as The Merchant
Luis Rico as The Indian Fur Trapper
Production
Mike Cheslik and Ryland Tews met at Whitefish Bay High School and came to collaborate on film projects.[5] The duo made Lake Michigan Monster, a black-and-white film that cost $7,000, in 2018.[3][6] The idea for Hundreds of Beavers was created by Cheslik and Tews while at a bar in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in October 2018. Cheslik directed, wrote, edited, and created the visual effects for the film while Tews played the lead role.[7]
Enough money was raised to film the first act, which was shot over the course of three to four weeks. The footage was then showed to other investors which allowed the rest of the film to be shot.[8] The black-and-white film had a budget of $150,000. It was shot over the course of twelve weeks by a six-person crew using a Panasonic GH5, which filmed it in 1080p, in winter in 2019 and 2020.[7][3][8][9] The crew stayed at a cabin in Manitowish Waters.[10] Nine weeks of filming was done in Stephenson, Michigan, and the northern Wisconsin towns of Manitowish Waters, Pembine, and Superior.[11][7]
The beaver suits were purchased online from a Chinese mascot website, with the teeth being modified by the filmmakers.[12] Eric West, Daniel Long, Jay Brown, and Mike Wesolowski wore the beaver costumes.[13] Over 1,500 visual effects were made using Adobe After Effects. Editing and post-production took two years to complete.[7][3][9] Tews' father Wayne composed and performed songs for the film.[10] Sound designer Bobb Barito used wooden kazoos, wooden clapper toys, and other wooden objects for the sounds in the film and used audio distortion for scenes including violence as "Violence sounds funniest when it's really distorted".[9]
Hundreds of Beavers premiered at Fantastic Fest in 2022. Cheslik and the producers chose to distribute the film themselves and Kurt Ravenwood oversaw the promotion campaign. They were aided by Jessica Rosner, a former executive at Kino Lorber. It was shown at fourteen independent theaters in the Great Lakes region, including the Music Box Theatre.[17] The filmmakers rejected distribution offers made after festival showings as those plans would only show the film in theaters for a week before sending it to video on demand.[8]
The streaming rights were sold to Cineverse.[22] The film received a video on demand release on April 15, 2024.[23] It was distributed in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom by Lightbulb Film Distribution on July 9.[24] More than half of the film's box office earnings were made after being released through video on demand.[25] It will be released on Blu-ray by Vinegar Syndrome on January 28, 2025.[13]
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 103 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Sustaining a zany premise with stylistic bravura and inspired gags, Hundreds of Beavers is a comedic gem that gives a dam."[26]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, gave the film a score of 82 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[27]
Dennis Harvey, writing for Variety, praised the film's editing as it could "milk every gag without belaboring it," the soundtrack was "equal to the visual imagination on display," and that the "ingeniously home-made lark never runs out of steam."[3]Peter Bradshaw, who gave the film 4 out of 5 stars in The Guardian, praised the "sheer sustained silliness" and the "film's absolute dedication to gag productivity".[28] Nick Schager, writing for The Daily Beast, declared the film "a marvel of slapstick invention that in terms of pure unbridled creativity puts most big-screen comedies to shame" and "an overstuffed live-action homage to the golden age of animation that's bursting with ingenuity and personality."[29] It received an 8 out of 10 review from FilmInk.[30]
Joseph Johnson, writing for The Harvard Crimson, gave the film 4.5 stars and praised it as "a groundbreaking technical achievement" due to the large amounts of complex animations.[31] Pete Volk, writing for Polygon, praised the film's visuals despite its small budget as it "nevertheless looks better than many modern blockbuster productions".[32]
Matt Zoller Seitz, who gave the film a perfect 4 stars in his RogerEbert.com review and later listed it as the fourth best film of the year, compared its low-budget filmmaking style to Eraserhead, El Mariachi, and the films of Wes Anderson.[33][34] Nick De Semlyen, giving the film 4 out of 5 stars in Empire, compared the film's "wacky wavelength and pure energy" to the early work of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson.[35]Daniel Scheinert praised the film, stating that it "is the key to making theatres fun, and is the future of cinema, and blew me away".[36]
Hundreds of Beavers was listed among the top 10 of the top 50 films of 2024 on Letterboxd[37] and the highest rated comedy.[38] For 2024, it was listed as the 42nd best film by The Guardian,[39] 3rd best by The A.V. Club,[40] and one of the ten best films by the Los Angeles Times[41] and The Boston Globe.[42] The editors of RogerEbert.com listed it as a runner-up for the ten best films of 2024[43] and Slant Magazine listed it as a runner-up for the 25 best films.[44] It placed 38th in IndieWire's poll of 177 critics.[45]The Boston Globe also gave a special mention to Tews' performance for its critics' selection of the ten best performances of 2024.[46] Film critics Alonso Duralde and Chris Stuckmann both named Hundreds of Beavers the best film of 2024.[47][48]
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