With Hundreds of Beavers, Mike Cheslik revives the slapstick genre for a snowy trip packed with hilarity and innovation.

Among all the animated films and productions with cutting-edge techniques, 6K cameras and backed by tens – if not hundreds – of millions of dollars, Hundreds of Beavers is an unsuspected presence in today’s cinema landscape. With their simple, slapstick humor worthy of a fusion of Buster Keaton and Chuck Jones, director Mike Cheslik and screenwriter Ryland Brickson Cole Tews – who previously collaborated in 2018 on Lake Michigan Monster – will be able to console fans who never had their Coyote vs Acme.

It’s the 19th century, in a snowy, lost part of North America, when an Applejack salesman loses his entire production due to beavers. Back in the primeval state of these forests, Jean Kayak (Ryland Tews) must find a way to exact his revenge, and win the heart of a young woman along the way.

Filmed in Wisconsin over six weeks in the winter of 2019-2020 with a small budget of $150,000 and a limited crew of six, Hundreds of Beavers isn’t even shot in 4K, only 1080p with a Panasonic GH5. And yet it’s quite incredible how quickly Cheslik convinces us of his implausible and eccentric universe, with its costumes of beavers, rabbits and other animals populating this place.

With a black-and-white look reminiscent of the silent comedies of the 1920s-1930s, Hundreds of Beavers adds a large amount of animation and practical visual effects in post-production, perfectly blending with the surrealism surrounding our poor Jean. Beneath the apparent simplicity of the costumes and drawings lies Cheslik’s immense efforts to make this work worthy of another era.

Over its 108 minutes, Cheslik wastes no time in filling his film to the brim with bewildering, extravagant and zany situations that play on physicality, geography and the specificities of the forest’s species. The whole thing is a cartoonish mishmash in which every element set up for a gag is never once gratuitously used, everything being used to the full, whether for comic or narrative purposes later on in the story.

But the filmmaker and Tews are not content to simply copy a slapstick style, the two men give a dimension very close to a survival video game quest. Jean goes from being a simple man with only his hands and head to fend for himself, to understanding and gaining the upper hand over the natural world around him as he discovers the diversity of species around him. Hundreds of Beavers pushes its concept further as the film progresses, with a system of exchanging the skins of killed animals as currency. To obtain a knife, a bat or a gun, Jean must bring back a precise number of animals to a trader (Doug Mancheski), who offers him a new tool for Jean’s inventory in return for the skins.

This videogame vision can also be found in the sound design of many of the film’s elements, from the beaver counter of the killer to the movements and questioning expressions of the animals. All these elements blend majestically together with the multiple use of elements incorporated from the beginning of the film, giving a notable and satisfying sense of progression in its world. Like a character whose inventory and level have gradually increased.

Thanks to this refreshing mix, Hundreds of Beavers is able to push Jean’s adventures ever further into an ever escalating extravaganza, to the delight of us all, as the trapper becomes ever more adept at devising traps. Mike Cheslik always finds a way to surprise us and make us laugh with this huge anything-goes sandbox he seems to have found, and proves once again that the quality of a film lies in its creativity and approach rather than in its pure visual appeal. With a budget of just $150,000 and a lot of resourcefulness and talent, Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews deliver one of the best films released in 2024.

Hundreds of Beavers – Official Trailer