Studio: Cartuna
Release Date: 1/28/2025
Rating: NR, but likely PG
Film Grade: B
The Story: Jean Kayak lives, breathes, and drinks his beloved applejack around the clock, which is also the toast of the locals. Then, tragedy strikes, as his refinery’s kegs are sabotaged by beavers! With no shelter in sight, Jean must use all of his wits to survive in the harsh, frozen northland and find a way to defeat assorted woodland creatures, some of which are planning something ominous of their own.
My Take: It's an absolutely hilarious, crazy, non-stop comedy. Think of it as a live-action cartoon combining animation and live action filled with humans, puppets, and people in full sized costumes. There’s no pretense of reality, it’s full-tilt physical comedy, in a black and white, silent movie style. The gags are fast and furious, prompting a ton of involuntary guffaws with its silly and absurd action and events.
This is a really, really low-budget film. A $150K budget film. But the entertainment value rivals movies that are 500x that cost. The costumes, effects, puppets, and animation are crude, but the filmmakers leaned into it and made them work within the context of the film. Having such a small budget and cheesy production values allowed them to let their imaginations run wild and free, creating something remarkably different from just about anything released from the studios.
Filled with a slapstick attitude, the story is much larger than one might expect, quickly going off into completely unexpected areas. The movie is filled with sight gags (some aimed at adults), callbacks, and loads of cartoon-style violence and cartoon logic that just keeps going and going. Although it’s done in a completely different style, I haven’t seen this many bits relentlessly thrown at the audience since the Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker days.
Ryland Brickson Cole Tews plays the role of Jean with gusto and a masterful mixture of physical comedy and facial contortions that play perfectly into the style of the movie. Tews cowrote the movie with childhood friend, and the director of the movie, Mike Cheslik. They make a great team, and Cheslik also got complementary performances from the supporting actors, working wonders given the limitations of non-verbal acting. Even the costumed creatures show a surprising amount of personality just through their postures and movements.
I’ll mention two small faults here. The first is that although the movie was shot in Wisconsin and Michigan during the middle of two winters, there’s a scene featuring eggs in a bird’s nest. That’s just not going to happen, and an odd choice for filmmakers who were raised here. But it is basically a cartoon, so some will be able to overlook it. The second is that some segments go on for a little too long. There’s a reason why cartoons are only run about six minutes. At 108 minutes, it could have trimmed about 10 from the various ending scenes without harm to the picture.
Visuals: This was shot at just 1080p on a DSLR camera, composited with over 1500 effects in Adobe After Effects, and then grain was added to the final cut. There’s no attempt to make this look like a 4K release, and that’s an inherent part of its charm as it emulates a movie from the silent film era. Even so, details and action are clear, with lots of contrast.
Audio: All of the sound was created and added after the movie was shot. There’s no real dialog, barring the opening song, but lots of unintelligible vocalizations combined with sound effects and a cartoon-style soundtrack. It fits perfectly with the visuals to fit with that old aesthetic but adding some modern twists.
Special Features: Wow, this thing is absolutely packed to the brim, with two discs filled with over 10 hours of bonus features. Disc two contains the full movie split into four quadrants: Upper left is the finished film, upper right is the base live-action roll, lower right is some of the animation, puppetry, or other special effects, and the lower left has the matching storyboards. It’s fascinating to see how it was all put together.
Sadly, the rental period didn’t allow me to check them all out, so I could only sample a smattering of them, but what I heard of the commentary tracks left me wanting to listen to all of them. All of the talent involved are passionate about the film and filmmaking, and their conversations are funny, entertaining, and enlightening, with some of that discussion being of particular interest for those of us from the area.
- Play Movie with VFX Breakdown
- Trapline Chapter Menu
- 3 Audio Commentaries: Sober Commentary, Drunk Commentary, Trashed Commentary (Moderated)
- Trailer
- Deleted Scenes
- Jean Kayak & His Acme Applejack — Lyric Video
- "Blink" — High School Short Film by Mike Cheslik
- Bobb Barito Sound Design Breakdowns
- Commercials & Promos
- Great Lakes Road Show Recap
- One Hundred Photos for One Hundreds of Beavers
- Movies that Made Me w/ Joe Dante & Josh Olson: Interview w/ Mike & Ryland - 5/07/2024
- WMSC 90.3 Montclair State University Radio: Interview w/ Ryland Tews - 6/01/2024
- Movie Mindset: Interview w/ Mike Cheslik - 5/27/2024
Final Verdict: Who said comedies are dead? They may be practically dormant in Hollywood, but they still live in the indie realm. It’s amazing to see what some imagination, ingenuity, and technology can do with even the slimmest of budgets. It only takes a few minutes to lean into the unsophisticated production values and get pulled into the crazy antics, chortling all the way (applejack optional). It’s just pure fun, practically daring you not to laugh. My wife enjoyed it even more, giving it a B+.
The movie is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, which would be a fine way to check it out. We will end up buying it for our collection at which time I’ll finally be able to watch and listen to all of those extras.
Fun Fact: There was no script for this movie, just a two-page story treatment and a ton of storyboards on notecards filled with drawings of the many, many gags.
My Review System:JVC DLA-RS3100 4K Ultra High-Definition Front Projector
Elite Screens Sable Frame B2 117” Width with Infinitely Variable Height
Monolith by Monoprice HTP-1 16 Channel Processor with Dirac Live
Monolith by Monoprice 7x200 Watts Amp
Monolith by Monoprice 3x200 Watts + 6x100 Watts Amp
JBL Studio 590 for Left, Center, Right, Wides, and Rears
JBL Studio 580 for Side Surrounds
JBL Studio SCS 8 for Tops
JTR Captivator 1400 Subwoofer X 4
Panasonic DP-UB420 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player
Oppo BDP-93
NVIDIA Shield Android TV - 4K
Xbox One X
HTPC Running madVR (work in progress)
Remote: URC MX-780
Mini DSP 2X4 HD controlling all subwoofers
APC S15 Power Conditioner with Battery Backup
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