Well, this is the weirdest pairing I've done in a while, but I don't want to wait any longer to put down some thoughts on these two movies.
I've tried to write more about romantic comedies, because the genre needs all the attention it can get these days. After a pretty dry spring, the only major romantic comedy of any real note from the last few months is Amazon Prime exclusive "The Idea of You." It's a fun bit of wish fulfillment for women in their forties, and as the intended target audience, if I don't talk about this movie, who will? At first glance, it seems pretty disposable - Anne Hathaway stars as Solène, a divorced mother of a teenager, Izzy (Ella Rubin), who has a chance meeting with a 24 year-old pop star, Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), and decides to pursue a relationship with him, despite knowing better.
Co-written and directed by Michael Showalter, everything about this movie is unlikely from the start. Solène runs an art gallery in the Los Angeles area, her ex-husband Daniel (Reid Scott) is a workaholic who can afford tickets to Coachella for his daughter and her friends, and Annie Mumolo is popping by Solène's house every so often for convenient girl talk. Then there's Hayes, the remarkable un-bro-ey pop star who falls so head over heels in love with Solène at first sight that he's dedicating songs to her and buying up every piece at her gallery. And isn't it convenient that Izzy (clearly played by an actress in her 20s) is going to be away at camp all summer, so Solène can jet-set around Europe with Hayes on the European leg of his boy band's current tour?
However, I like the Showalter and his co-writer Jennifer Westfeldt use the opportunity to dig into the hypocrisy around "cougar" relationships, and events unfold pretty realistically once the public finds out. This is not "Notting Hill," and the media attention quickly proves to be too much for Solène and Izzy to handle. And there's something very admirable about the movie choosing to face that reality instead of perpetuating the fantasy, and choosing a rather quaint, old-fashioned ending. "The Idea of You" is still fluff, but it's not overly mindless fluff, which is always a nice surprise. Anne Hathaway hasn't made something this light and Nora Ephron-esque in a while, and frankly that's a shame. She's still terribly charming and watchable doing this kind of material, and the movie goes down pretty easy, even if I wasn't much of a fan of the poppy musical interludes. Galitzine's fine, but boy bands were never my thing.
On to "Hundreds of Beavers," which is quickly becoming the cult film of the year. Directed by Mike Cheslik, starring Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, and written by them both, this is a low budget labor of love, with some truly demented intentions. "Hundreds of Beavers" feels like some nostalgic Wisconsinite filmmakers decided to recreate some of the violent cartoons of their youth, but nobody could draw, so they decided to just put people in ludicrous mascot costumes to play the animals, use video game assets for anything they couldn't build themselves, and have a live action guy as the main character, running amok.
So, this is the tale of 19th century fur trapper Jean Kayak (Tews), who traverses a snowy forest in search of bunnies, beavers, raccoons, and other animals to annihilate. It takes a while for Jean Kayak to build up his skills and his inventory from zero, trading furs to the Merchant (Doug Mancheski) for tools and weapons. He also flirts with the Merchant's daughter (Olivia Graves) and works toward the seemingly impossible goal of trapping hundreds of beavers to buy her a diamond engagement ring. "Hundreds of Beavers" is in black and white, there is no audible dialogue, and all the visual effects shots were created with Adobe After Effects. It plays a bit like an old Buster Keaton short, except that it's an hour and 48 minutes long, and the visual language is a lot more cartoonish and surreal. For instance, every time Jean succeeds in killing one of the animals, its eyes are X'd out with big black crosses.
It takes a long time for "Hundreds of Beavers" to establish how the universe works, show the mechanics of how all the animals and weaponry function, and set up the stakes and goals for our hero - maybe too long. The film's major flaw is its pacing. There's a point where we get a video game map mechanic showing all the different locations where Jean travels, and we just watch him make his rounds, gathering supplies and checking traps, incrementally building up to the big, wild finale where everything snowballs into chaos. Small gags are repeated over and over with new variations, and tend to get funnier each time, but there's a significant chunk of the movie that just feels like a slog. It didn't help that for a good amount of "Hundreds of Beavers," the gags and slapstick didn't strike me as particularly funny.
However, the movie is absolutely fascinating for what it manages to accomplish on such limited resources, and its particular blend of influences, from old cartoon tropes to giant monster battles in the finale. It reminds me a lot of "Molli and Max in the Future," but even more of a shoestring production, relying on a lot of passion and ingenuity. Comedies are very hit or miss for me, and I know that "Hundreds of Beavers" has won over a lot of fervent fans. And for their sakes, I'm thrilled this movie exists.
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