Release Date: Out Now
Directors: Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar
Writers: Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar
Starring: Stéphane Aubier, Franco Piscopo, Vincent Patar, Jeanne Balibar
Studio/Run Time: Zeitgeist Films, 75 mins.
Delightful stop-motion throwback makes serious forward progress
With the success of shows like Robot Chicken on Adult Swim and The Fantastic Mr. Fox on the big screen, there’s been a renewed interest in the world of stop-motion animation. And so, from Belgium A Town Called Panic arrives, a delightfully wacky story about a small rural community inhabited by toy figurines who are unpolitically-incorrectly integrated; where Cowboy, Indian and Horse can co-exist as a family unit, albeit an extremely absurd one.
In this feature-length story based on the TV series of the same name, Indian and Cowboy discover that it’s Horse’s birthday. Their good intentions lead to an online order for 50 million bricks instead of the required 50. (If compared to the Three Stooges, Indian and Cowboy would be interchangeable versions of Larry and Curly.) While they try to find a use for the bricks, Horse pursues his infatuation with Mme Longrée the music teacher. The story then turns into a loony adventure that includes killer robot penguins, thieving underwater sea creatures, a freefall down through the center of the earth and an abduction by maniacal scientists. The film’s creators return to the basics with good old slapstick and a nod to the early, fantasy-filled cartoons of animators like Max Fleischer, Chuck Jones and Walt Disney, combined with the simple stop-motion of Art Clokey’s Gumby. Ordinarily, this sort of animation can only be taken in small bites. But the sparkling wit and revivalist schtick in Panic easily merits some longterm attention.