Hundreds of Beavers

A hilarious take on black-and-white slapstick in modern day! Made on shoestrings and a prayer of a dream, this movie takes what is beyond a hilarious premise of a freezing winter and every animal within it attempting to kill one single person in the early 1800's. It's a brilliant premise and earns its rating here. Let's get into Hundreds of Beavers.

PLOT: A beautiful chaotic nightmare.

What is so good about this movie is its simple premise enhanced by cartoon logic. Yeah, it's just a man trying to survive the wild, but how each animal outsmarts him and every interaction between him and others goes is what makes the movie so brilliant. Even the snow has it out for this poor man as he attempts to survive one night in the cold. Every plot point emphasizes his miserable state of being and helps the comedy land even harder.

CHARACTERS: Memorable and silly.

This movie thrives on its silliness and only quality actors and characters can deliver the premise in an effective manner. Luckily, this movie thrives on its low-budget charm to emphasize such traits and make its characters easy to understand and interesting. Every single character has a memorable gag or trait that sets them apart and it's all delivered brilliantly by the actors with minimal dialogue and facial expressions alone. Heck, the animals have to convey emotion without any of that and through purely physical movement. It's so good.

SHOTS: Homage to the "good ol' days".

What I call a loving homage to black and white slapstick is definitely to others a flick from the "good ol' days". My point being, this film relies heavily on old tricks utilizing black and white, cheap animation, and shot composition to tell the story. Seeing the hundreds of beavers on screen has to be terrifying, so the shot lacks lighting and only clearly shows their faces to demonstrate the situation. It's a nightmarishly funny shot and several examples such as this exist within the movie. It's visually stunning despite only having the range of two colors.

SOUND: Entrancing.

Like with my review of Thelma, I said music can enhance or remove the quality of a movie by being noticeable. This is the former camp, it's very much enhancing the movie and pays respect to classic black and white films with cheesy songs about their main characters from the Old West. The music is very much in the vein of those films and further delivers the comedy of the film where needed.

WRITING: What writing?

This film has no dialogue, hence no writing. But, the writing that exists is effective and hilarious. Good overall!

LITTLE THINGS: The commitment to the bit.

Too many films rely on dialogue (I will be handling this in another review, cough cough Rebel Moon cough cough), but this film not only relies on little dialogue, but also essentially bare minimum facial expressions outside of the main characters. Overall, this film is bare minimum but works so damn well.

VERDICT: A slapstick comedy done to perfection.

Watch this movie. It's hilarious and you won't regret it. That's all, folks!

SCORE: 10/10, perfection.