FANTASIA23 REVIEW: Hundreds of Beavers [2024]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 108 minutes
Release Date: January 26th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Cartuna
Director(s): Mike Cheslik
Writer(s): Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews

J’accuse!

Ryland Brickson Cole Tews and Mike Cheslik’s Lake Michigan Monster earned its cult following with a DIY aesthetic and madcap absurdity that I respected more than I enjoyed. It was fun. A title I’d recommend being seen by those who already have an inclination rather than one I’d enthusiastically demand be viewed sight unseen.

So, I won’t lie and say I didn’t approach their follow-up Hundreds of Beavers with slight trepidation. Or that my discovering it was a whooping 108-minutes long didn’t make me cringe at the thought of going comatose once the joke went stale. But while this live-action “Looney Tunes” epic of silent-era slapstick nonsense is definitely too long (I admittedly took a critical break around the hour mark), it proves itself to be a vast improvement over its predecessor by fully leaning into the madness until you can’t help reveling in its charm.

The story follows a hapless apple whiskey purveyor named Jean Kayak (Tews) who gets too sloshed on his own wares to realize an influx of beavers have been munching on every piece of wood in the forest. Fast-forward to the third verse of the opening song and Jean finds himself destitute and dry in the freezing cold, his apple trees and distillery burnt to a crisp.

A few circuitous gags later, whereby he attempts to keep warm and find food, puts Jean onto the trail of a master trapper (Wes Tank), a cantankerous shopkeeper (Doug Mancheski), his furrier daughter (Olivia Graves), and a native trader (Luis Rico). Gleaning what he can from their comings and goings, he eventually becomes a trapper himself with dreams of killing enough rabbits, beavers, and wolves to buy a good coat, get his own rifle, and marry the only woman in this war zone of conniving creatures regardless of her father loathing his very existence.

Cheslik (who directs) and Tews (who co-writes with him) pretty much put forth a series of skits wherein Jean is brutalized by his would-be animal victims in ways that teach him how to later brutalize them instead. He uses that unintentional education to lay the foundation for a Rube Goldberg-esque master plan of food pyramid violence that he knows can win him his prize. And all the while the beavers continue building a bunker that houses dastardly plans of their own.

It’s a humorous ride in lo-fi yet impeccably crafted compositing between live action and animation for quick-witted Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote action—with a few Bugs Bunny versus Elmer Fudd shenanigans thrown in. Mostly silent besides grunting, the scenes between humans (namely Jean, the Furrier, and her father) homage Chaplin/Keaton antics while the decision to have all the animals played by people in mascot costumes lends a surreally inspired dynamic of nightmarishly comic proportions.

That it all leads to a finale you cannot even begin to imagine is both its best and worst feature. Because despite it making the ride worth any pacing bumps, it also reveals just how berserk things could have gone much, much sooner. Yes, the ways in which Jean and the animals attack each other escalate in their idiocy as time passes. But it’s still just them trying/failing to kill each other again and again.

Those first two-thirds desperately need more variety and WTF details like a Beaver Sherlock and Watson. Setting up what’s coming with intent (and a much defter hand than you might assume while watching) only matters if your audience remains awake for the payoff. If not for my makeshift intermission, I might not have been. But I’m glad I was since its conclusion really is unforgettable.