Hundreds of Beavers

The funniest, and certainly the furriest movie you will see this year, Hundreds of Beavers channels the zany slapstick shtick of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Bugs Bunny through a videogame quest narrative to retell the eternal saga of Man vs Nature. Man, in this case, is an inebriate applejack distiller, Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) who takes up fur trapping to survive a harsh winter. As for nature, the local fauna — beavers, raccoons, horses, skunks — stand tall in mascot costumes with zippers up the back, and they are as plentiful as the title suggests. Unimpressed with Jean’s antics, the critters put up stout resistance.

All proceeds from this screening go to the Vancouver Food Bank.

A marvel of slapstick invention […] puts most big-screen comedies to shame.

Nick Schager, Daily Beast

Soulful silliness… gleefully inventive lo-fi madness… a gag-stuffed wilderness comedy… Gonzo cinema moonshine, distilled from the corny legacy of every loopy genius from Buster Keaton and Tex Avery to Mel Brooks and George Miller. You haven’t experienced anything remotely like it.

Robert Abele, LA Times

This is richly imagined escapist entertainment, a fun machine that opens up rarely used neural pathways and gets you thinking about what cinema could be, in addition to all of the things it already is. Future generations of low-budget filmmakers will derive inspiration and comfort from it. It’s one for the ages: a dam fine movie.

Matt Zoller Seitz, rogerebert.com