Review: 'Town Called Panic' is zany fun
Published 4:00 am, Friday, January 22, 2010
A Town Called Panic
It's amazing what can be done with bits of plastic and cardboard and an abundance of imagination. "A Town Called Panic" is an ultra-low-tech animated exercise from a Belgian filmmaking duo with a genius for sight gags, absurdity and general mischief. It may put you in mind of silent comedies and freewheeling animators of the past like Chuck Jones.
Filmmakers Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar, who met at Belgium's School of Visual Arts, make characters out of small plastic figures - the kind children play with - and construct their sets with papier-mache and cardboard. They employ the venerable technique of stop motion, which, together with their materials, give the film a nicely homemade feel. They also work incredibly hard, having used 1,500 toy figures over the course of a 260-day production.
Most importantly, they have the wit to create a world of anarchy and delight. Their inventiveness extends to tiny touches and gags that fly by in a second.
The movie's diminutive heroes are the accurately named Horse, Cowboy and Indian. Horse is the brains of the operation, the other two his goofy sidekicks. Cowboy and Indian decide to build Horse a backyard barbecue for his birthday, and order supplies online. Alas, they accidentally wind up with 50 million bricks instead of 50, with destructive consequences that greatly annoy their blustery neighbor, farmer Steven, who deeply loves his tractor.
When Horse and friends try to rebuild their house, the new walls keep disappearing, which sets them on a merry chase to the center of the Earth and through an underground ocean, where they battle a family of nasty humanoid fish.
A subplot involves Horse's studying piano at the music school of Madame Longray (also a horse), who fancies him. There's also a giant penguin that's actually a machine controlled by a group of tough-guy scientists. And a cop with a perpetually upraised billy club. And Steven's hardworking wife, Jeanine, who makes him mammoth pieces of toast for breakfast.
The temptation is to rattle off all the movie's best bits, but that would be wrong. I suppose I do need to say that the energy falters in a few moments, and some humor falls flat, but given the volume of jokes, it's almost unfair to hold this against Aubier and Patar.
As is often the case with animation, the zany vocal work here, including Patar's as Horse and Aubier's as Cowboy, contributes a lot to the fun.
"A Town Called Panic" is aimed directly at your inner 8-year-old, and it strikes home.