The funniest film of the year has a 150.000 dollar budget and was directed by two high school buddies with their friends. Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews put their friend in a beaver costume they got from the mascot costume shop, all of the other animal characters are played by humans in costumes too. Shot in the middle of the Minnesota winter, it’s about a former owner of a cider brewery who drinks away all of his fortune and lands in the woods naked. He gradually becomes a trapper, and although the story is not that far removed from Jack London's story, it is accompanied by an extremely dense firework display of visual jokes and running gags. There’s no talking, but there are various exclamations, moans, groans, sighs, and animations, some of which are also incorporated into the live-action film, such as a question mark above the heads of beavers who are wondering. Anyone who has a taste for nonsense and slapstick will love HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS, but anyone who prefers more sophisticated humor may be in the wrong film. It’s all about pure fun and untamed nonsense, most comparable with the Looney Tunes films and Buster Keaton, with a touch of surrealism and Charlie Chaplin when the secret masterplan of the beavers comes into play.

Tom Dorow

Translation: Elinor Lewy