Set Aside Notions About Actors in Animal Suits: ‘Hundreds of Beavers’ Is an Intensely Clever, Richly Textured Farce

“Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” having been primed by “Top Gun: Maverick,” may have saved Hollywood from financial and cultural oblivion, but they don’t hold a candle to “Hundreds of Beavers” in terms of hardscrabble invention, independence of vision, and cinematic integrity. That, and none of those multimillion-dollar time-wasters have quite as many actors scuttering around in full-size animal suits. Or, as they are listed in the film’s credits, “mascots.” Imagine the costumed enthusiast who accompanies the cheerleaders of your favorite sports team and you’ll have an idea what to expect from the low-tech raccoons, rabbits, foxes, wolves, and, yes, beavers featured in this, the first full-length film by director Mark Cheslik. The special effects are similarly modest, reflecting the film’s budget — reports have it costing around $150,000. In movie terms, that’s chump change.Which isn’t to say that the special effects are lacking. They are spot-on given the nature of the proceedings, being unapologetic in their rough hewn, if not strictly speaking handmade, construction. The cut-and-paste verities of “Hundreds of Beavers” is an integral part of its charm — as is, it should be noted, the grainy black-and-white cinematography. The picture is a throwback not so much to early cinema, but to arthouse fare like “The Seventh Seal” (1957) and “Eraserhead” (1977).Mr. Cheslik and his co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews have thrown not a few things back in this unlikely picture. They’re conversant with silent film comedy and vintage cartoons, particularly those produced by Warner Brothers. The influence of Mad Magazine is also there to glean, most evidently in the way the film’s poster channels the great cartoonist and caricaturist, Jack Davis. Messrs. Cheslik and Tews have a soft spot for Stanley Kramer’s “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” (1963).Via SRH“Hundreds of Beavers” is a silent comedy like the films by Pierre Étaix and Jacques Tati are silent comedies — that is to say, they’re pictures that rely on recording technology not for dialogue but for all manners of noise. Squeaking, grunting, splatting, barking, and a rousing introductory song are there to be heard, as well as a soundtrack that is simultaneously generic in tone and particular in its emphases. What words we do encounter come via title cards. The first of them reads: “Lord grant me chastity … but not yet.” St. Augustine, don’t you know. Our filmmakers would seem to have gone to college.Worries that Messrs. Cheslik and Tews are sophomoric in their comedy should be waylaid. Their senses of humor haven’t graduated high school. “Hundreds of Beavers” is pure slapstick — done with a nod-and-a-wink, but also blessedly absent of self-aggrandizement. The out-and-out goal of this hyperkinetic film is to prompt laughter. It does so with the circumstances of a bare-bones plot and the associations cultivated by a hundred-plus years of cinema. It’s an intensely clever and richly textured farce.Oh, and the story: It’s the 19th century and an applejack salesman, Jean Kayak (Mr. Tews), is out to take revenge on the titular critters for having laid his orchard to waste. That’s all the set-up needed for a sterling array of gags laid out in quicksilver order. There’s a love interest involved (Olivia Graves) and homages aplenty to Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Orson Welles, as well as Einsteinian mathematical theorems. A working knowledge of 20th-century collage and video games is, if not necessary, another layer of reference.Should you be inclined to sit down with your children in front of “Hundreds of Beavers,” be warned that among its many revelations is that pole dancing was an invention of hearty Europeans who pioneered the American northwest. If there’s one thing to bellyache about it’s that at 108 minutes, the picture is more fur-trapping than most of us can withstand, particularly with comedy this manic. Otherwise, this oddball, word-of-mouth entertainment is one of the most heartening finds in recent memory.

Set Aside Notions About Actors in Animal Suits: ‘Hundreds of Beavers’ Is an Intensely Clever, Richly Textured Farce

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