Hundreds of Beavers
Elmer Fudd: The Movie
What do you do when you desperately want to make a classic era Warner Brothers cartoon but haven’t got the budget for all that expensive animation? Well, if you’re Mike Cheslik the answer is to get a bunch of guys to don animal costumes and then make a black and white silent film.
It wears its influences on its sleeve, taking inspiration from Looney Tunes, Chaplin and more recent fare from Pixar and Aardman. And tries to do all that on a clearly minuscule budget. Crucially, it absolutely succeeds.
It’s slapstick and sight gags are consistently funny. It’s endlessly imaginative, throwing new ideas at the screen every few minutes, each more outrageous than the last.
Which, sadly, proves to be the films flaw. It’s too long, too stuffed with ideas to hold your interest over an hour and three quarters. Classic Looney Tunes worked because they stuffed all their ideas into a short, violent burst of mayhem. Pixar sustain interest through emotional investment. Aardman have amazing animation and an ability to pack in jokes at an absurd rate.
Hundreds of Beavers doesn’t quite match up to any of those and I was ready for the film to end a good twenty minutes before it actually did.
Still, it seems churlish to moan at a film for trying to give you too much. This is exactly the movie the film makers wanted to make and I really can’t applaud them enough for doing so.