Seriously, Go Watch "Hundreds of Beavers" and Also Read My Lengthy Analysis of Why It Matters

Hundreds of Beavers, a 2022 slapstick comedy film that was built on a $150,000 budget and successfully self-distributed to streaming services in 2024, may be the best movie you'll see this year.

It may also be the most important movie you'll see this year.

Yes, it's about a hapless trapper who is even less wily than the coyote he resembles, taking at least three pratfalls for every pelt he collects.

Yes, the animals he battles are literally actors in mascot suits.

Yes, the entire film is shot silent-movie style, in black and white, with old-timey orchestral accompaniment and dialogue cards where necessary.

It is still the most important movie you'll see this year –

And also the best –

or maybe it's just the best and most important movie I've seen this year, and I want to try to explain to you why.

We have to start with the reason Larry and I decided to watch it, which had a bit to do with Amazon's recommendation algorithms but even more to do with the thumbnail generated for the film – because we scrolled past at least a dozen recommended movies we knew we'd hate, things that were not specifically designed for us but more specifically designed for people who don't want to make choices ("meh, this one has Aubrey Plaza in it, might as well"), and then we saw it:

My immediate thought was "this looks like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World," which turned out to be correct in the sense that it was the association the filmmakers were trying to make –

and my second thought was that someone had put thought into this movie.

Which, you know, how do you know?

And yet you do, because you also know that this other movie, the one that Amazon really wants you to watch, NUMBER THREE IN THE U.S., had no thought put into it at all.

And so I told Larry that we would not be watching My Old Ass tonight, we would be watching Hundreds of Beavers, and then he told me he had already started watching Hundreds of Beavers without me (he's been unwell) and he was still thinking about it.

"It's kind of bizarre," he said. "I don't know what it's about."

By the time we got to the end of it, two hours later –

because this was not the kind of movie we stopped halfway through, like we did with that "meh it's got Peter Dinklage in it" thing, to take a break and predict how poorly it it might end –

in fact I should say that we aren't actually into movies that much because most movies aren't into us –

which is to say that they aren't into anybody, they only offer bland everymans who are grumpy but good at heart, e.g. Dinklage and Plaza in every role they've played after they stopped playing characters –

because a character must act, must take action, must solve the problem of how to live, but I don't even have time to get into that –

Because two hours later we knew exactly what Hundreds of Beavers was about.

It's about the work it takes to create an integrated work of art.

Hundreds of Beavers was directed by Mike Cheslik and written by Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, the latter of whom stars as the hapless trapper.

As far as I can understand from the handful of interviews I've found online, Cheslik and Tews had two major goals with this project:

1. Create a unique and unified filmworld that combined classic elements with new ideas while teaching its audience how to speak its language ("speak" being deliberate, since the audience is mentally providing much of the dialogue)
2. Pursue the most interesting ideas even and/or especially if they are labor intensive, require the acquisition of prerequisite knowledge, and/or present the challenge of communicating said ideas to an audience

They're going to say "wow, those are a lot of words to describe making a fun movie," and yet you have to ask yourself what makes a movie fun, which is much like asking yourself what makes a game fun, or what makes anything fun, and the answer has something to do with the definition of Quality I proposed several weeks ago, which I will restate in full:

This brings us back to the idea of quality referring to the ability to provide new information – by which I really mean that a quality item or idea has the ability to provide new information continuously, and by which I really really mean that a quality item or idea has the ability to provide unforgettably new information continuously.

FUN = PROVIDING UNFORGETTABLY NEW INFORMATION CONTINUOUSLY.

At this point I should just stop the blog post and say go watch this movie.

But we're not done here yet, because the first thing I wanted to do after I saw Hundreds of Beavers and talked it through with Larry was go online and find all of the bloggers and film reviewers who were analyzing this movie, to see what they had thought of that I hadn't thought of yet –

And then I remembered that none of those blogs and review sites existed anymore, because the internet has since shifted towards the kind of algorithmically directed content optimization that gives us both the Google Answer Box (soon to become the Google AI Answer Box) and My Old Ass.

Which, in turn, demonetizes thinking –

And since we must pursue money at all costs –

Well, I'd predict I'm the only person on the internet writing thousands of words on Hundreds of Beavers.

And if there were other people out there, Google isn't going to let me find them.

It's worth noting, if only in passing, that Ribbonfarm just announced the death of blogs.

It's also worth noting that I am not on Substack, the one platform on which longform writing is technically thriving – and this is a deliberate choice, because Substack wants to eat both your life and your soul (yes these are two different things, you may refer to them as your time and your integrity), Substack is blatantly specific about the goal of Substack:

The ultimate goal on Substack is to convert casual readers into paying subscribers.

And so to do that it has become this Culture War Prediction Market, in which you literally (or perhaps figuratively, if you aren't good at math) use Bayesian logic to hypothesize which posts might earn you the most conversions.

And then, you know, you just hypothesize. Will this bad person do this bad thing? Should you fear this? Should you vote that? Should your kids learn this? Should you eat that? Here are some products I recommend, here are some people I hate, here's a paywall.

And so I am on Ghost, which essentially means that I am hidden from the internet.

Unless you find me in what you might consider the old-fashioned ways.

The Hundreds of Beavers team has said that the biggest challenge they faced was in fact distribution, and it isn't just because they're competing with My Old Ass, although that has to be part of it.

I mean, why should Amazon promote somebody else's good movie over their perfectly good movie? Every person who watches an Amazon MGM Studios production instead of another studio's production must bring more money to Amazon, otherwise there wouldn't be an Amazon MGM Studios.

The other part might have something to do with the idea that Hundreds of Beavers requires active participation. You have to figure out, as the film progresses, what's going on – and you are rewarded in many of the same ways as our hapless trapper, as he slowly learns how to outwit the wilderness.

Hundreds of Beavers doesn't tell, it shows –

and because of that, you have to actually watch.

Fortunately, Hundreds of Beavers contains enough slapstick that it could never seriously be described as an "intellectual film," the way some of my writing has been described as "too complicated for the casual reader to follow" – which, you know, you're either 1,399 words into this blog post or you've already bailed out, good choice either way – and it hits this particular balance in a way that I've never successfully pulled off, which is worth paying attention to, especially if you're me.

Because the best part about Hundreds of Beavers is that it makes me want to do better work.

It also makes me want to figure out how to distribute it.

So I'm still reading Plato – I told you I would, after all – and I've gotten to the part where Socrates explains that the art of making art is to make art and the art of making money is to make money, and a person may well want to study both arts so they can do them excellently without defaulting to falseness.

(There's also the art of spending money, which he specifically designates as its own thing, and we can learn to do that excellently as well.)

He says the same thing for every other profession, in case you're curious. The art of being a physician is to be a physician, the excellency of which can be tracked on various matrices (preventing disease, restoring health, etc.) and the comparison of which can be ranked and quantified the same way two lyre players can be compared and ranked by their ability to tune their instruments and play accurately.

But both physicians and musicians must also become excellent at the art of making and spending money.

Otherwise, they run the risk of becoming corrupt.

Taking shortcuts.

Starting Substacks.

Creating and then recommending My Old Ass.

"oh come on Nicole there are a few good Substacks, Sam Kriss is doing excellent work"

"nope, even Sam Kriss is writing about how Substack corrupted him into culture war content, and yes I know that's part of his thing, he wants us to feel bad about his feeling bad and then point out that he made us feel bad on purpose, and then he'll remind us that most of his readers will have stopped reading at this point so we'll feel good about ourselves again, and then he'll tell us that he may have to post about politics to earn money, just a few politics posts, just a little money, but also he'll post these ludubrium for us, the special readers who understand that ludubria is a big word but may not take the time to look it up"

"you are saying there are none good Substacks?"

"also you're going to have to actually watch My Old Ass now"

"I know"

Hundreds of Beavers is the best movie I've seen this year because it's the only movie to both attempt and succeed at creating a unique, integrated filmworld that is thoroughly and entirely fun.

It's the most important movie I've seen this year because it makes me want to work harder at my own art. To make the more interesting choice, even if it takes extra time or requires me to chase down a few prerequisites. To avoid any sense of selling out.

It's also the most important movie I've seen this year because it has absolutely nothing to do with the culture war (and, in fact, reminded me that I could just stop reading that entire section of the internet forever and also stop watching movies like Barbie and literally nothing would happen except I would be happier, which could mean I might have better ideas, which might mean I could make better art). It isn't trying to make you feel a certain way about a certain thing. Hundreds of Beavers exists on precisely its own merits, and reminds you that art – true art – belongs above any of the political and cultural arguments that they've been trying to resolve since Plato immortalized Socrates.

It's also laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Which, I mean –

when is the last time you've laughed, out loud, at a movie????

🧔🎥🌲🪓🐻🗺️❤️