We tend to think of slapstick comedy gag writing as a lost art. It didn’t die along with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, but its most acclaimed practioners these days are in animation, heirs to the Chuck Jones/Looney Tunes tradition.
But here’s a side-splitting, cartoonish but live-action comedy about a frontier drunkard, fur trapping and never quite obtaining the basics of survival in wintry 19th century Wisconsin.
In “Hundreds of Beavers,” food, shelter, clothing and companionship are kept just beyond the reach of the hapless hero in an increasingly hilarious and downright deranged farce that features a sea of woodland creatures played by people in fuzzy mascot costumes.
It’s from the creators of the whimsical and even more nonsensical “Lake Michigan Monster,” writer-director Mike Cheslik and co-writer/star Ryland Brickson Cole Tews. Whatever absurdist bar they set for themselves there, with “Beavers” they clear it with a knockabout romp that plays like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, borrows from The Old Masters of silent slapstick and finds its laughs the old fashioned way — with somebody getting bonked of bested, falling down a hole or pounded on the noggin by a woodpecker.
For their latest trick, Cheslik and Tews go even more primitive in their search for “primal” comedy with a pretty much dialogue-free black and white slapstick farce about the hard life on the frontier.
A musical prologue introduces us to apple-growing/hard-cider (applejack) distilling Jean Kayak (Tews), his success and downfall — a drunken accident destroys his business. The tale of Jean Kayak and applejack is half-animated, half-danced and sung by a Pythonesque chorus.
And when Jean shifts his focus to just staying alive in the bitter cold — building a fire, struggling to fish or hunt himself something to eat, the movie changes titles to Jean Kayak and “Hundreds of Beavers.”
That’s the pelt most-valued in the 1810s or so, the one the surly trader (Doug Mancheski) will barter for. Well, that and raccoons, maybe rabbits, too.
Not that Jean is any good at outsmarting, catching and killing them. He needs rescuing by the bearded, sleigh-riding Master Trapper (Wes Tank), and the occasional life-saving barter with The Indian (Luis Rico).
But the trapper, his pelts and his dogs (more actors in mascot suits) are taken by wolves, one and two by two. The Indian is only so much help.
As the trader has a flirty, fetching skinner/furrier daughter (Olivia Graves) Jean is motivated to persevere, trapping his way towards competence, trading his way towards the “hundreds of beavers” the trader will take as the price of his daughter’s hand.
The filmmaking is simple, crude and quite funny, with in-camera effects and the cheapest digital ones available that put our hero and the wildlife in snowbound conflict on an ice-covered lake where the beavers are organized and building the most elaborate dam and lodge this side of the Waldorf.
We see Jean scheme and study and learn and luck into pelt after pelt, so many that a silent beaver version of Holmes and Dr. Watson start investigating his “crimes.”
A climactic chase through the beaverworks is as cartoonish as it gets, with a horde of beavers tumbling after Jean in an image borrowed from Keaton’s classic “Seven Chances.”
The furrier’s daughter’s behind-daddy’s-back flirtation ups the ante until a stripper pole is introduced.
Sight gag after sight gag follows pratfall after pratfall. The narrative runs on a tad too long, meandering into more and more convoluted messes. But I was in slack-jawed awe at the gag-writing/problem solving on display here. Getting our hero into and out of the wolves’ cave, into the beaver lodge, or into a bartering position to succeed at this wild hare and beaver trapping enterprise is a marvel of visual wit.
Tews was wacky and droll in “Lake Michigan Monster.” Here, he reverts to mime and the occasional daft scream, an intrepid Everyman we root for — and against. Because beavers and bunnies are cute, right?
It is the funniest film you’ll see this year, made on a shoestring and costumed on the cheap, because buying beaver, rabbit and raccoon suits in bulk is the best way to visualize “Hundreds of Beavers” and the trappers who cross them.
Rating: unrated, comic violence, pole dancing
Cast: Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Olivia Graves, Doug Mancheski, Luis Rico and Wes Tank
Credits: Directed by Mike Cheslik, scripted by Ryland Brickson Cole Tews and Mike Cheslik. An SRH
release available on Apple TV, Amazon, etc.
Running time: 1:48
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