The Cartoonish Perseverance of ‘Hundreds of Beavers’
A live-action cartoon.
Hundreds of Beavers features my sort of gimmick. The movie takes the antics of old-school cartoons and replicates them in live action. For good measure, it throws in some video game sensibilities as well.
It came out in 2024, now officially known as “last year.” Some of you have already discovered this gem, and the rest of you may be thinking, “Hundreds of what now?”
Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, who co-wrote the screenplay, stars as Jean Kayak, an applejack salesman who experiences a downturn in fortunes. To survive in the snowy wilderness, he attempts to hunt rabbits and lure some fish. Eventually, he realizes he can make good money as a fur trapper, pitting him against … Hundreds of Beavers.
Directed by Mike Cheslik, the movie depicts the animals in, let’s say, an idiosyncratic manner. They act like cartoon characters, but they are not cartoons, nor are they real animals. They’re especially not CGI animals.
No, they’re actors in silly costumes. You know the characters who entertain children in amusement parks? Sort of like that. Two of the beavers even dress and act like Sherlock Holmes and Watson, which is as natural as anything else going on here.
The movie is shot in a grainy black-and-white, like an old-timey silent film, which creates a surreal atmosphere and enhances the costumes’ silliness. There’s virtually no spoken dialogue, just grunts, gasps, and sneezes that instantly turn into icicles. Slapstick, however, is abundant, as are the visual gags. Some bits are plenty juvenile, but that’s to be expected in a live-action cartoon.
Our aspiring fur trapper is a Wile E. Coyote sort. He keeps setting traps for his prey, and they keep failing to fall for his traps. For example, he builds a snowman to fish for him, but the fish pulls the arm off the snowman and swims off with the bait. So, Jean builds a muscular snowman, which, logic dictates, should be much stronger than the non-muscular snowman. Alas, this fails too.
Jean falls for some of his own traps along the way, though. He even gets caught in a bear trap, which, naturally, causes no lasting injury, just lots of pain and distress in the moment.
The merchant (Doug Mancheski) seems built in the mold of Pete from the early Mickey Mouse cartoons, complete with frequent spitting of tobacco. The merchant has a daughter (Olivia Graves), who quickly becomes the quintessential cartoon love interest. And like a good cartoon character, she has her own wild side, displaying a manic zeal as she chops up a dead animal. The sparks—and stuffing—fly.
Jean is the classic old-school cartoon protagonist—the underdog who tries and fails, tries and fails, tries and fails. The world keeps beating him down, but he pulls himself back up and carries on. Like early Mickey, he’s neither good nor evil; he simply does what he needs to do, resulting in ever-escalating wacky antics and blatant disregard for the welfare of animals. And he learns along the way, which gives the movie a nice sense of progression. His perseverance might just pay off.
At an hour and 48 minutes, Hundreds of Beavers does run a bit too long. I split it up into two parts, and the movie benefited from that choice. But I respect the filmmakers’ decision to go all in on their zany concept. It’s the sort of gimmick that works only once in a blue moon, so they might as well milk it for all it’s worth.
Which they do.
Even though the gimmick occasionally grows stale, it never becomes as repetitive as I expected. The video game structure holds everything together admirably. Jean defeats a critter, exchanges it for new tools, and levels up. The movie draws inspiration from the past while remaining highly inventive throughout. Cheslik and Tews keep pushing events into sillier and sillier territory, and I do appreciate good unhinged silliness.
Hundreds of Beavers is one of a kind, and it should remain one of a kind. It shows how we don’t need to simply rehash old favorites; we can let previous works and styles inspire us to create something new in a new way.
Incidentally, I once employed a similar gimmick in a different medium, when I wrote an old-school cartoon as a prose short story.
You can read it here:
Hundreds of Beavers is a far more impressive achievement than my little story. It’s worth checking out if you’re in the mood for something that’s different, distinctive, and more than a little demented.