A Town Called Panic (2009)

Simply Perfect

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Blistering performances.

Superbly inventive animation movie devoted to the lunatic adventures of three old-fashioned toy figurines. The figurines are 1) a horse called Horse, 2) an indian (or native American) called Indian and 3) a cowboy called Cowboy. This may sound simple to the point of idiocy, but beware : the movie is far from simple, it is a riotous concatenation of visual and/or verbal puns, jokes, spoofs, tableaux vivants, Freudian slips, tricks, echoes and "anything goes" nonsense. Indeed, the movie is so clever that some of the jokes only become evident after a second or third viewing. Note, by the way, that not everything is sweetness and light in the "Panique" universe : some of the ideas are so sharp that you could cut marble with them.By now you may have guessed that the movie has Belgian roots. (It's something in the water. Why else would we drink all that beer ?) The movie is so long, and so abundant, that it's best not to watch it in one sitting, in the same way that it's best not to go through a bowl of nachos and a plate of vodka martinis on your lonesome. If you're technically able to do so, create intermissions and watch "Panique" in short episodes.If you like the movie, watch out for "The Christmas log", which has earned more laurels and praise than Caesar.

Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar are genius animators from Belgium. Their genius was obvious with the amazing and touching feature, "Ernest and Celestine"...and it was so good it was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. "Frozen" won the statuette...and is proof that in this case the Oscar folks were looking at ticket sales and not originality or quality...."Ernest and Celestine" was THAT good. I have also seen a super-weird short from the pair, "La Bûche de Noël"...a very strange and funny stop-motion picture that made me laugh. Well, it turns out the same characters from "La Bûche de Noël" also appeared in an earlier full-length film...one worth seeing, "A Town Called Panic".Like the follow-up, "La Bûche de Noël", this one is stop-motion and features the same three characters...Indian, Cowboy and Horse. They all look like children's toys but unlike the plastic soldiers and cowboys of yesteryear, these ones bend and move about on their plastic bases. Cowboy and Indian are both complete idiots and Horse is the long-suffering friend whose life seems to revolve around getting them out of trouble...trouble they brought upon themselves! In this case, it all begins when Indian and Cowboy order 50 bricks online so they can build Horse a BBQ. But, because they are stupid, they end up ordering 50,000,000 bricks! What's next? Well, you wouldn't believe me if I told you!!The film made me laugh and seemed a bit like a movie made by some very precocious children. However, the pacing was a bit of a problem...and because of that I actually prefer the follow-up short. Still, well worth seeing...especially if you want to see something very original.

A manic, ADHD suffering, surreal, stop-motion masterpiece, delivered by the team behind the Cravendale Milk ads... from Belgium.A horse, a cowboy and a red-Indian live together, argue over the shower, order a bazillion bricks, get stuck in traffic, stake out their own walls, do battle with underwater aliens, get abducted by a snowball throwing mega-penguin, and play cards while falling to the centre of the earth. Then things get really strange.Apparently animated using a tub of plastic toys by a bunch of Ritalin dodging five-year-olds on a Sunny-D bender, A Town Called Panic is not the most coherent of films, but it is brilliantly inventive and frequently ball-achingly funny.

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.