It's A Good Day to Watch Hundreds of Beavers
A few words about hundreds of beavers
It’s Sunday. A wonderful day for blogging, a wonderful day to go out for a nice walk if the weather is good, and a wonderful day for kicking back, relaxing and watching Hundreds of Beavers.
Technically speaking a 2022 film, Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews’ slapstick farce has been a true 2024 phenomenon. I got to see it at a special screening just before TIFF in 2023, but it took until this year for the film to properly build its momentum, playing in special runs and one-off event screenings around North America and now the world. It’s also available to rent or buy digitally (word from its makers is they get the most money if you do that on Amazon).
But what the hell is Hundreds of Beavers, and does it really have that many beavers?
To get this out of the way: that beaver count may in fact be conservative. You see, Hundreds of Beavers is the classic story of an applejack salesman, Jean Kayak, who falls for a merchant’s daughter, but must first deliver hundreds of beaver pelts in order to win her hand. The face-off begins.
What Hundreds of Beavers really is, though, is a Looney Tunes-style extravaganza of clever gags, filmed to look like an old silent film, but made with the best (see: cheapest) of modern visual effects.
Made on a budget of $150,000, Hundreds of Beavers is filmmaking at its most charming and inventive. It’s also regional filmmaking at its finest. Just some guys from Wisconsin with a lot of ideas and the scrappy determination to pull it off. Some cheap beaver costumes from China, a copy of Adobe After Effects, and heart to spare.
Letterboxd published a great featurette, in which Chelsik explains how some of the visual and special effects in the film were shot, and it’s simple amazing to think of all the care and attention and inventiveness that went into crafting each and every from of the movie.
And I should mention here, too, that Hundreds of Beavers is funny. Very funny. Extremely funny even. When I saw it theatrically, last year, in a packed house, I actually felt exhausted at certain points from laughing too much.
Hundreds of Beavers is simply a great film. One of the best films of 2024 (and 2023 and 2022). It’s also, in my mind the kind of film that gives me real hope for the future of movies. A big statement, perhaps, but I feel it in my bones. The other week, I wrote about Janet Planet, and included in that my thoughts on German director Angela Schanelec, whose experimental approach to narrative changed the way I think about movies. If the future of film can be found there, in movies that push the boundaries in avant-garde fashion, it can just as easily be found in a group of friends coming together with whatever money they can get their hands on, getting dressed up in beaver costumes, and putting on the most deliriously entertaining show you’ve seen in ages.
I think, as well, of The Vast of Night, the Twilight Zone-inflected sci-fi drama self-financed by writer-director Andrew Patterson, which I saw at TIFF back in 2019. The film was picked up by Amazon, and is available to stream on Prime.
Not at all the cartoony mayhem of Hundreds of Beavers, what’s most striking about The Vast of Night is its seriousness. It’s the story of a high school student and a local radio jockey who begin piecing together a series of mysterious events being reported around town. It looks amazing, with great lighting, impressive camerawork and long takes, and excellent performances to match. Patterson is extremely smart about using the resources he has, going big when he can, but also going small when it makes sense, including extended sequences that play over a black screen, like an audio drama. Again, it’s the inventiveness, along with simply being a great movie.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from The Vast of Night, and even cheaper and scrappier than Hundreds of Beavers, is the work of Matt Farley and Charles Roxbourgh. Farley, who has found financial success producing literally thousands of silly songs to game music streaming algorithms under the label Motern Media, has accrued a growing following, in part thanks critic Will Sloan and filmmaker Justin Decloux, who literally wrote the book on Motern.
Farley and Roxbourgh’s films are beyond cheap. They’re basically slapped-together bits of long form silliness, with plots that rarely make sense, terrible acting by their group of Manchester, MA-based friends and family members, and while they’re not exactly “good,” they are definitely great. Cinema at its most absurd, and also its most democratic. Proof that anyone can pick up a camera, and with enough determination and tons of good spirit, can make work that will reach people all over the world.
So maybe rent Hundreds of Beavers on Amazon, or stream The Vast of Night, or head over to Tubi and watch Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You!. Get yourself acquainted with cinema made by the people, for the people. That’s some real Sunday energy.