Hundreds of Beavers
Year: 2022
Rating: Unrated
Length: 86 minutes / 1.43 hours
Low-budget films often get a bad reputation because their lack of funds becomes obvious in the finished product. There are plenty of places where the application of more money would make for a more polished result. Sets, sound, costumes, special effects—many of these things suffer when the finances don’t allow for the ability to do them correctly. Or, as is the case with Hundreds of Beavers (2022), you focus on what you can do with the money you have and make creative decisions to disguise how little money it took to make.
The creative choices that went into this film helped it overcome its meager budget. As a comedy, the cardboard cutout special effects used work for laughs. Even the fact that all the animals are just people in mascot costumes is goofy enough to distract from the almost childish way things were put together. Of course, dubbing all the music and sounds on top of the captured footage likely saved money by not needing on-site audio recording. Monochrome is also very forgiving, which was likely why Hundreds of Beavers was shot in black and white.
As a black and white and “silent” film (there are still some grunts and other talking-like noises), Hundreds of Beavers evokes the madcap silent comedies of the early era of cinema. It feels like a slightly more modern version of The Gold Rush (1925), but with a bit more bathroom humor. Some of the running gags are pretty good, but there’s also a bit of the plot that’s hard to follow in this silent format. It’s definitely worth a watch just to see how much you can do with $150,000.
An amusing silent slapstick low-budget film that hits it out of the park, I give Hundreds of Beavers 4.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
