I’d been waiting to see Mike Cheslik’s magnum opus for about two years now, and heard it hyped up at festivals for twice as long. So, when I was finally able to see it with my own eyes — in a packed cinema no less — you bet I was excited. But was the praise warranted, and did I maybe have my hopes just a little too high? Luckily, it was just as good as they say. Hundreds of Beavers isn’t just a love letter to Cartoons and silent-era slapstick, it’s a goddamned renaissance.

When Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) and his cider brewery go up in smoke thanks to some rogue beavers — their gnawing of the largest barrel culminating in a mass fire to his apple orchard and an explosion that heralds in an ice age for the surrounding wilderness — the young man is forced to survive a harsh and unforgiving winter. Having no success with his harebrained schemes to catch and stew a couple of rabbits, and his well endowed snowmen struggling to help him catch and fry any fish, he succumbs to the hunger and cold.

But not before being rescued just in nick of time. Picked up just in time by the jolly Master Fur Trapper (Wes Tank) and his sleigh of hounds, Jean accompanies the Christ(mas)-like figure to drop off his sack of animal pelts to his friend and patron, the grizzled Merchant (Doug Mancheski). And it’s there where Jean meets the prettiest woman alive, The Furrier (Olivia Graves). However, learning that her hand in marriage belongs to the Master fur Trapper, and that her father is loathsome and hard to please Merchant, Jean makes it his mission to become a Fur Trapper worthy of the old man’s praise.

The film really is something you just have to see to believe it, but Cheslik goes above and beyond what you’d expect a live action rubber-hose cartoon to look like. The Merchant will squash a stretch his face with displeasure as he spits ink coloured tobacco toward a spittoon, only to miss it in increasingly comical ways each time. Era accurate lighting will obscure Jean’s face as he skulks around the beavers’ elaborate lair, and wide lensed close-ups exaggerate every characters’ already distinct features.

That’s not to mention the wonderfully nostalgic sound design. Despite being a relatively silent film, special care is taken to give every character a unique voice. Crisply dubbed and bursting with energy, every shout, cry, swear and cheer adds a layer on top of the already expressive body language of its actors, to make even the most hardened critics chuckle. Combined with old school foley techniques and the Merrie Melodies of Chris Ryan, Hundreds of Beavers is no doubt looney.

But it also dances to its own tune, and with a score of other influences from video games to modern internet humour, it’s easy to see why. Because the film establishes itself as an expert of the form, it’s breaking away from tradition produces the most laughs. When the Furrier skins Jean’s first kill, the doting music, her lighthearted giggles and his swooning over her are all funny in their own right. But when blood splatters, organs squelch and A deflated raccoon’s plush innards spill out onto the table, it induces a slight shock in the audience. It’s Cheslik’s ability to escalate — escalate jokes, plot points and obstacles — that keeps feeling repetitive. It’s says something when a movies has more bits than beavers, and I still walked away wanting more.

The VFX work, while simple is shockingly competent for this level of production. The green screening of people is not only clean but flawless. A manipulated leg here or there is nothing compared to the lack of haloing or artifacts that even multimillion dollar productions struggle to iron out. It’s film emulation is enough to fool even the most analogue filmmakers unless you know what to look for, and the aforementioned lighting is stunning to look at from a technical standpoint.

Really, Hundreds of Beavers is a testament to time, passion and commitment. Anyone willing to write about the patience it takes for a man to trap thousands of cunning animals certainly isn’t a director riding trends and hurrying out slop. In an age where studios are touting 300 million plus budgets while giving none of it to their rushed and tired VFX staff, and even channels like Corridor Digital, who have the talent and resources necessary to make incredible proof of concepts, but whose algorithm dictates quick two second google searches, one week turnarounds, and dabbling with AI, make the otherwise passionate team unable to think outside the bounds of a clickable thumbnail, it’s nice to see that Cheslik doesn’t just know his stuff — he lives and breathes it.