Hundreds of Beavers

Endlessly inventive in the style of a 1920's silent movie, Hundreds of Beavers asks the question, what do you get when you cross Wile E Coyote with Buster Keaton and set him loose in the wilds of a Wisconsin winter? The answer is a damn good time despite - and in some cases because of - the low budget effects and cheap production values.

Blending animation with live footage, the movie is a series of pratfalls, skits and visual gags that could just as easily be tasks in a video game, or else a drunken dream brought on by imbibing too much cider.

Humans wearing animal onesies are a terrific stand-in for anthropomorphized cartoon characters. Similarly, the fact that the over the top violence more often than not results in death also seems more appropriate to the live action genre.

It's unlikely that Disney will come calling anytime soon (unless they discover a market for a pole dancing princess), which means you'll just have to take a chance and discover the charm of this movie's raw, unpolished nature on your own.

Brilliant concept, and for a while it had some really funny moments. The problem is, an hour and forty eight minutes of slapstick leaves you feeling quite numb at the end. There is a reason why cartoons are short or why Three Stooges shorts are less than 15 minutes. You watch too many of them and the law of diminishing returns rears it's head and you end up tuning out. I found myself looking at my computer and looking up at the TV the last half hour or so. It's a shame because if this was edited a little bit tighter I might consider this for repeated viewing but this one is a "one and done" for me.

A black and white, essentially silent film has never been this much fun, nor has it been crafted with such exuberant adolescent heart, yet Hundreds of Beavers channels all of its ambitious, lo-fi energy into one of the most exhilarating gut-busting films I've seen in quite some time. Scrabbled together with no money, six beaver costumes, and spare time with friends Mike Cheslik creates a Looney-Tunes-level physical comedy romp, enlisting endless sight gags and simple plot mechanics that only get bigger, better, and sillier. The one-note story of an applejack farmer becoming a master beaver hunter gets elevated by revenge, romance, and subtle intelligence, leading to a climax full of payoffs that have been carefully placed throughout its runtime, amplifying Hundreds of Beavers' ability and soul. While the film isn't necessarily an emotional one, I found myself moved, if not for the characters than for the filmmaking. With no studio backing or theatrical distribution, Hundreds of Beavers has nothing to leverage and nothing to sacrifice, it's inherently itself through and through to the very end. Doing so, it soars to such great giddy heights that it's unwaveringly momentous that so much imagination still exists and proves there's still so much more to make, a true testament to the power of visual storytelling.

Before seeing the movie at the Hamburg Fantasy Filmfest, I wondered how an hour and a half of playtime can be filled with the ideas in the trailer without getting slow or tedious. Now I actually wonder when it was the last time I laughed that much through a whole movie.

While delivering a consistent, smart, reduced and extremely efficient visual syle, the presentation doesn't let your focus away for one second, otherwise you might miss something funny. The way it symbolizes, repeats and develops the events by smart iteration in a limited universe ist ist excellent!

I highly recommend seeing it. Not for small kids.

Not at all horror but I can absolutely see why Terror-Fi festival included it. This is by far the silliest movie I have ever seen, and I mean that as a high compliment. I thought No One Will Save You would be the most wordless movie I would see this year, but I was wrong. There are about 3 actual words uttered in this one. Content warning - Hundreds of animals die in this one but every animal is either a person in a costume or a plushy puppet so you'll be alright. When you first start this very entertaining live action looney tunes movie you will wonder how they can sustain it for a full feature length run time but they absolutely manage it and it's always hilarious and entertaining.