Mike Cheslik’s “Hundreds of Beavers” comes riding with an abundance of praise, hailing it as one of the best comedies in years. My expectations had been cranked up as high as they get, which arguably may have affected my viewing experience in deeper ways than I can admit. A great comedy relies on a subsistence of gags that hurl themselves huge and softly at the viewer yet don’t feel too pronounced and heavy in the path of its direction. A certain lightness is essential, not just in the delivery of tone but also in the way characters traverse spaces that could be predictable but nevertheless continue to yield a rich feast of pleasures.
This calls for extreme delicacy and coarseness functioning at the same time in a thrilling continuous whole. The work can have a puerile slant to it. It need not have sophisticated gags to land. It is not a binding necessity, but when it chooses to go broad and ludicrous, how far and how much can it afford to go without stretching itself thin? How long can a viewer endure comedy grounded in juvenilia and a series of sight gags?
These questions kept tossing in my mind as I was watching the film. I was pleasantly surprised as the film continually exploded every single apprehension of mine. Fully in monochromes, the film is a silent-era comedy full of accentuated visual gags. Unfolding on a snowy expanse of the US-Canada border, it follows Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews), a distiller whose enterprise is devastated and pillaged by hordes of beavers. Since he finds all his life’s work damaged, he chooses not to sink into misery but to retaliate against the attackers, seeking revenge. He is a lone figure with no family life or friends. Now, he’s lonelier. He aims to rebuild everything as he is propelled by the support of the fur trapper (Wes Tank) and the merchant (Doug Mancheski), who push him on the bloody road of setting things right.
This kick-starts into motion a spectacular riot of wild proportions. As it descends into an interminably long series of clashes between not just beavers but various animals, including fish, wolves, rabbits, and man, you are expected to be in on the joke; otherwise, it’d be tough buying into the heightened ridiculousness. Cheslik really revels and delights in the bizarre and inane. He isn’t asking for a calm logic, a rational framework of appreciation.
It is crucial to distinguish this as it can ease you into a more enjoyable experience than bringing to the film a set of undue biases. It is rare for films to wholly commit to the giddily reckless bouts of pure, exaggerated visual gags as much as “Hundreds of Beavers” does with a surging enthusiasm and vigor. Nothing seems to have been out of bounds in the imagination of Cheslik, who has also edited the film in a manner that frequently sends you into a dizzying spell just by witnessing its unceasing barrage of inventiveness and frolic.
As the film bounces across a startlingly expansive array of genres and templates, it never strays from its core spirit. It maintains a strong sense of the demented while its protagonist hurtles through a seemingly never-ending progression of hurdles that challenge his quest of taming the landscape and thrusting it under his grip for his commercial endeavor. There’s an unhinged energy to the film, which it never shies away from; instead, it uses that as its springboard for mounting the series of short, snappy vignettes bursting with vivacity and adventure. In its often-ribald humor, the film achieves its most distinctive textures and a screen-popping flavor.
When it all wrapped up, I was left reeling. At no point does the film flag or waver in its intent and design. It stays firmly consistent in its identity from start to finish and promises an exhilarating ride. “Hundreds of Beavers” is an uproarious blast that displays ambition in its imaginative leaps of a scale rarely seen, furiously galloping towards a climactic set piece that is positively head-spinning. This is one of the most recklessly, freely zany films that I’ve seen in a while.
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