Movie Review- Hundreds of Beavers

By Richard Mason

I love the underground goofball celebration, Hundreds of Beavers. The black and white comedy is out-there, 108 minutes of larger-than-life animals fighting a woodsman in remote Wisconsin.

The Elmer Fudd esc protagonist, played by Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, is hunting beavers for survival, and to win the heart of the daughter of the local fur trader. It’s a little violent, although I thought it never got raunchy or gross. While originally premiering to the festival circuit in 2022, Hundreds of Beavers is finally available to the general public through renting on Apple TV and Prime Video.

The movie mixes modern fast paced comedic sensibilities and old fashioned physical humor masterfully. It’s like The Three Stooges, Yogi Bear, and Tom & Jerry with a more relevant dark comedy angle. There’s a lot of repeating gags, my favorite being that the trails left in the snow all have icons to represent the person or animal that left it. I think the repetition is what really defines this movie. The reuse of failures and mistakes by the hunter brought me back to the sort of trial and error logic of classic cartoons. This movie is partially animated, only a little, but it’s at its most “animated” with the speed of the slapstick with the real actors.

The animal characters are all costumed actors that bring a chaotic energy to the movie. They sometimes go about in synchronized ways, such as the beavers who have a cute society established inside their dam-fort. The animals are more often very volatile in their movements and create great physical comedy. The way they wrestle with one another or get caught in traps is one of a kind in its cartoon logic coming to life. This movie is silly, it exists in its own world of bunnies falling for giant snow carrots and a nearly invincible protagonist.

I think Hundreds of Beavers would make for a good Christmas or general winter watch. I don’t know a lot of feature length films to compare the light-hearted movie to, but if you check it out and enjoy it, seek out Jim Henson gem Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas. The holiday musical is full of animal puppets and revolves around an otter mom and son that try out for a talent show. I am a lifelong fan of furry animals that live by rivers, so these two movies are big for me personally.