Justin’s rating: All the beavers in the world were harmed in the making of this motion picture.

Justin’s review: I… I honestly don’t know how to start this review, other than to say that this might be the most singularly unique movie I’ve ever seen.

But it does leave you lost for words. Which is, I think we can all agree, not a good thing for a reviewer.

I’d heard a lot of strong word-of-mouth recommendations for Hundreds of Beavers, most of which went along the line of, “You just have to see it for yourself.” So I did. One Friday evening, I put this on the TV and sat there with three of my four kids. All of us were mystified and confused for the first 20 or so minutes, with my kids taking turns shooting me glances like, “Has Dad finally lost it?” And I was giving them looks like, “Maybe I have?”

Then it clicked. Then it got awesome. Then, when the end credits arrived, we were grinning and laughing and talking about our favorite parts.

Admittedly, it’s a hard film to pitch to friends, but I feel that I got a handle on it. So bear with me, and maybe I can convince you to give this a try (because you totally should).

Hundreds of Beavers is a black-and-white indie film that’s heavily styled after those old Looney Tunes cartoons. You know the ones: short on dialogue, long on slapstick and repeated gags. This is very much a living cartoon, complete with Xs over dead people’s eyes, thought bubbles, repeated gags, and wacky cartoon logic and physics. But instead of everything being animated, most of it is filmed with people wearing various mascot costumes (rabbits, wolves, and — of course — beavers) out in the snowy wild.

It tells a sort of twisted coming-of-age story of a nameless guy who accidentally burns down his cider-making orchard and has to reinvent himself as a trapper. While initially drunk and helpless, our hero experiments, observes, sobers up, and apprentices until he learns the trade. Initially his incentive is to get dinner, but before long, it’s to earn enough to marry the fur trader’s daughter. And to do that, he’ll have to bag… Hundreds of Beavers.

As I indicated earlier, this is initially a slow burn with only a smattering of jokes. But if you stick with it, you’ll be rewarded with exponentially increasing levels of wackiness, laughs, and shrewd absurdity. Once it registered with me that we were seeing a guy going on an actual character journey of self-improvement, I became impressed. At the start of the film, he’s repeatedly bested by the simplest of woodland creatures. But there comes a point where the tide turns and his smarts and talents start to win the day.

While plenty of people have made the comparison between this movie and cartoons, there’s something else to this that doesn’t get talked about as much. This film is, for all intents and purposes, portrayed as a survival-style video game. The guy “levels up” by bagging critters, selling them at a store, earning better gear, platforming around the woods, and going on a circular route that’s helpfully illustrated by his trapper map. It’s weird, but it works. My kids thought it was a bit like Animal Crossing mixed with Minecraft (and maybe a smattering of Crossy Roads at the end).

The repetition of the trapper’s journey allows us to revisit the same places, see different variations on traps, and have gags come back around again and again. We’ve got things like a poop bullseye for the creatures, a Sherlock-and-Watson beaver duo tracing the “crimes” of the trapper, raccoons that apparently really love to eat rabbits, and a strange and intriguing structure that the beaver army is creating in the background. Oh, and the film’s title credits don’t show up until well over the halfway mark.

I’m sure that Hundreds of Beavers won’t click with everyone. After all, cartoons and video games and silliness aren’t universally liked. But if any and all of those things are your jam — or perhaps you simply want a heaping of physical humor like the good ol’ days of silent film antics — then you owe it to yourself to walk on the wild side and see this film.