TIFF 2023 | "Hundreds Of Beavers" Effortlessly Generates Hundreds of Laughs
10/12 ForReel Score | 4/5 Stars
Beyond any shadow of a doubt, Mike Cheslik’s slapstick action comedy Hundreds of Beavers is the year's funniest movie. Screening at TIFF Midnight Madness coordinator Peter Kuplowsky's underground pre-game program “Midnight Dankness,” the film was met with uproarious laughter from an intensely rowdy crowd.
Midnight Dankness has been slowly making a name for itself over the past few years by having early screenings of smash-hit films, such as last year's Barbarian by Zach Cregger and James Wan’s Malignant the year before. Accompanying the films are psychedelic pre-shows by Canadian editing collective “RACER TRASH,” who specialize in chopping and screwing beloved and cult films into perplexingly dazzling and comedic short videos that live stream on Twitch. After this year’s pre-show, Cheslik was brought on stage wearing a massive raccoon hat, thanked us for attending, and introduced the film.
Starring Cheslik’s high-school friend Ryland Brickson Cole Tews as Jean Kayak, Hundreds of Beavers follows the misadventures of a drunkard apple orchard owner who accidentally destroys his entire orchard due to his drunken mishaps. Taking place in the fur-trapping economy of 19th century Wisconsin (the filmmaker and star’s home state), Jean Kayak has to learn to survive in the peculiarly unforgiving wilderness. In a way, the film almost plays out like Looney Toones from the perspective of Elmer Fudd. In Kayak’s escapades, Cheslik litters the film with gags and bits that made my sides hurt from laughing so much. What’s truly marvelous about the film is how Cheslik keeps the viewer on their toes by being as unpredictable as possible. The film could run out of steam very quickly, but Cheslik and Tews breathe enough fire into the film to ultimately bring it home. A punchline is seldom repeated; if it is, how it is set up is entirely different from the first. Cheslik rarely cuts in the film, but when he does, it’s either for his rambunctious action sequences or to deliver a new and hilarious punchline.
The film is a technical marvel, with seamless blends of puppetry, stop motion, miniatures, and as many practical effects as possible. The anthropomorphic animals in the film were people in respective rabbit, beaver, wolf, and raccoon suits. Although the film’s name is Hundreds of Beavers, Cheslik used only six beaver suits. The film also boasts several incredible and cartoony depth-of-field shots, but, to my surprise, the film was not shot on any special lenses (believe me, I asked). Instead, the film was shot on a standard DSLR camera with plastic lenses, to which Cheslik led a chant about doing all of the effects in Adobe AfterEffects during the Q&A.
The setpieces, which are blends of green screen, practical sets, the open wilderness, and CGI (for the more ambitious moments), have so much novelty, and the digital black and white 16mm filter over the film hides some of the low-budget CGI. In the latter half of the film, as the film’s absurdism snowballs, Cheslik incorporates homages to great physical comedians like Benny Hill and Buster Keaton and includes a reference to the iconic gear scene from Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. The film’s third act also has a setpiece that almost seems like a platformer video game, with a delightfully violent mix of Super Mario and Frogger, which got huge laughs from the crowd. Despite its one-note plot, Cheslik’s direction and comedic timing still greatly exceed expectations.
Revitalizing the slapstick comedy with a cartoonishly violent twist, Mike Cheslik’s Hundreds Of Beavers is an idiosyncratic love letter to the foundations of comedy that would make Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin proud.