A Town Called Panic

Saw this on a plane back from Canada and didn't expect much - just struggling to find something to occupy the time.

How wrong I was. Hilarious, totally surreal, laugh out loud funny (hate to think what the other passengers thought of me). Other reviews link this with the Wallace and Gromit series and in many ways, the inventiveness and off the wall humour are along similar lines. The gloriously cheap stop motion animation is a world away, however - Cowboy and Indian, for instance, even have the little flat stand to hold them up like regular children's toys.

Don't take that as a criticism, however- it just makes the whole thing more endearing. This isn't Avatar - this is more like Morph: forget the budget, it's all in the skill of the film maker to tell a great story that's a laugh a minute and keeps you watching. You may struggle to understand what's going on at times, but who cares?

Imagine a world not unlike Terry Gilliam's Monty Python animations mixed with a dash of Robot Chicken, The Mighty Boosh and finish with the wonder of the mind of a child at its most innocent imaginative play and you are close to the beauty that is 'A Town Called Panic'. Made using stop/start animation using only existing toys it mixes humour and surrealist notions in equal measure. In this world talking horses play piano and fall in love, pigs swim underwater with octopuses and scientists are mental and super strong. The main story centres on the characters Indian, Cowboy and Horse who share not just a house but adventure and after a simple present buying goes bizarrely wrong they embark on a multicoloured toy road trip that will see them visit the centre of the earth, the depths of the ocean and the icy cold of the tundra. Along the way they will meet all manner of beings and get into all manner of situations that are as funny as they are weird. Like a strange mix of Morph, South Park (although for kids it is a PG) and Laurel and Hardy its appeal should reach all age levels and keep young and old thoroughly amused and entertained throughout. An animated classic that's bold, different and magical 'A Town Called Panic' is one crazy place to visit just remember to leave the serious you at the door.

A Town Called Panic is simply brilliant! It is very simple, and the film consists of Indian, Cowboy, and Horse's misadventures, but the screenplay is clever and very funny. The biggest worry one has when watching a film like this is that maybe after a while the animation style or loose story- telling technique may get one overwhelmed, I know that was my biggest worry. But There was no need! This film was entertaining from the first second to the last, and it is a very energetic film that never once stops. It the equivalent of a child bouncing up and down because he is on a sugar high. If you expect a theme or very story oriented animated film, look elsewhere. This film is all about the one-liners and the wacky situations, but it was still really amazing for a film like this to be this entertaining. Brilliantly well done, and I think it is better than two other similar animated films, Coraline and Fantastic Mr. Fox.

I just saw this at the WFAC. I must say that I wasn't expecting much out of this film. It's a good thing that I went to see it anyway, because it turned out to be one of the highlights of the festival. The closest equivalent to what "Sita Sings the Blues" was last year; though the two films are in many ways quite different, they share between them a wacky sense of humour and a refreshing inventiveness. The story of the film is insane and has to be seen to be believed. This is the kind of story that, as a kid, you wished existed somewhere. It starts out with a cowboy and an Indian accidentally ordering 50 million bricks for the birthday of their roommate, Horse, and goes from there to a visit with the Atlanteans, the centre of the earth, and giant robotic penguins.

The animation in the film is just as entertaining. I'm sure that some would call it crude, but the fact remains that it's very expressive and perfectly suited to this story and these characters. The French-language voice acting is also great.

The film has no great moral or lesson to teach us, but I think it is no less of an achievement to make something that's genuinely funny. The only thing I thought a bit strange was that it seems to go on for a little longer than it felt the natural ending point of the story should be.

This film is in the running for the animated feature Oscar this year, but probably won't be nominated; it's too low-profile and somehow I think that the animation style could offend some of the Academy professionals. But who cares about what the Academy folks think? If you want to watch something fun (even better if it's with friends), I'd highly recommend it.

(In French, 75 min.) This feature-length stop-motion animation that appeared at Cannes is based on the Belgian TV series by Stephane Auber and Vincent Patar. It's a film all made up using tiny figurines to tell the story of a journey to the center of the earth whre a parallel society of pointy-headed and dishonest creatures reigns. Voices of French actors Jeanne Balibar (The Duchess of Langeais) and Benoît Poelvoorde (of Man Bites Dog) are heard. The filmmakers revel in the jerkiness of the figures in (stop) motion.

You might not know this is the same stop-motion technique used in Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox. Auber and Patar have collaborated ( and voice two main characters) in a film that's not only simpler and more primitive in effect (figures even have little stands on the bottom like plaster toys) but more truly uniquely for children. Clearly this cast and crew had more modest means and objectives and motives. They didn't get glamorous superstars to voice the parts and they worked visibly from scratch, bringing to life recreations of kids' little Plasticine toys, a typically mismatched collection including a horse, an Indian, a cowboy, mechanical tractors, a piano lesson, and moving them around on surfaces that could be a village, or could be a train set or a display under a Christmas tree.

These are actually spin-offs from a TV series that Belgian, French, and maybe French Canadian kids would know. They were featured in five-minute films on the arty but widely watched French TV outlet Canal Plus and later dubbed by "Wallace and Gromit" producer Aardman Animations for export to other outlets such as Nicktoons in the U.S.; they can be found on YouTube.

The Town Called Panic effect is much more boldly artificial and crude than the stuffed but charming furry creatures in Wes Anderson's film. This is a thing of slapstick and chases, upended figures and screeches and scrambles. "An antic little joy ride," the Variety reviewer has called it, and that's about right. Shown November 13 at the San Francisco Film Society's 4th Annual Animation Festivial as one of three animated features (the others: Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox and Tarik Saleh's Metropia), it enjoyed a preview at Film Forum in New York the following week, and begins a limited US theatrical release at Film Forum December 16. The feature is not dubbed like the Aardman Animations shorts, which is better to capture the flavor of the original, of course.