Instant classic Hundreds of Beavers to screen as $5 movie at the Panida

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

When director/co-writer Mike Cheslik gave an interview to the Associated Press about his black-and-white, mostly silent slapstick comedy Hundreds of Beavers last year, he said, “When we were shooting, I kept thinking: ‘It would be so stupid if this got mythologized.’”

That’s exactly what’s happened since the film debuted in a series of “carnivalesque” screenings in 2022. Despite lacking widespread theater release, a budget of $150,000 and a shooting schedule of 12 weeks, Hundreds of Beavers won 20 U.S. and international awards — and gathered 20 nominations — in 2023 and has been described as “a fun machine” by rogerebert.com, which gave the film four enthusiastic stars.

Another description might be “live-action Loony Tunes,” focused on the story of hapless applejack salesman Jean Kayak (co-writer Ryland Tews), who has serious beef with some beavers and battles them in the frozen woods of the 19th-century Great Lakes region. The action escalates with increasing absurdity, zany characters and frenetic energy, employing trippy “special effects” that are enhanced by their lo-fi nature. 

The beavers are obviously played by humans in googly-eyed beaver suits, elements of the scenery that are meant to be huge are obviously miniatures, and the movements of the actors are dramatic and at times herky-jerky in the style of the silent films of the 1920s.

Sandpoint area audiences will have the opportunity to see what critics have compared to latter-day Monty Python and “a triumph of big imagination” when it comes to the Panida Theater as a $5 movie on Saturday, Jan. 25, with screenings at 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. Doors open 30 minutes before the showings. Get tickets at panida.org or at the door (300 N. First Ave.).