Panique au Village (A Town Called Panic)

ON THE BACK: "Hilarious and delightfully wacky, the stop-motion extravaganza A Town Called Panic has endless charms and raucous laughs for children* and adults alike. Based on the Belgian** cult TV series, Panic stars three plastic toys named Cowboy, Indian and Horse who share a rambling house in a village that never fails to attract the craziest events. Featuring a journey to the center of the earth, a trek across frozen tundra (complete with giant snowball-throwing robot penguin) and the discovery of a parallel underwater universe of treacherous, pointy-headed creatures, A Town Called Panic is zany, brainy and altogether insane-y!"



AS A FRONT: you had me at "Belgian cult TV series."




*It's not Wallace and Gromit. There is alcohol consumption and considerable use of the word "bastard."



**The film is in French with English subtitles, but the dialogue is not so rapid-fire that one has to choose between keeping up with the dialogue or the action.



IN BETWEEN: A Town Called Panic is where you go when you mature into an adult while still holding on to your childhood curiosity and fascination with the world.



Cowboy, Indian and Horse are seemingly unemployed roommates who spend their days watching TV, drinking coffee and pulling pranks, but their friends and neighbors are farmers, policemen, mail carriers and teachers we only see hard at work (with the exception of one night spent at a wild birthday bash for Horse). The misconduct of Cowboy, Indian and Horse cause quite a bit of misfortune to befall the other inhabitants (Cowboy and Indian accidentally order five million bricks, try to store them on their roof, and cause an avalanche that destroys a farm and shuts down the roadways; another incident leads to a tidal wave, and it takes a ENTIRE presumably economy-less YEAR to rebuild the town), but they manage to coexist without resentment due to a great equalizer--they are all plastic toys living in a plastic town.



It's easy to accept such oddities in a film targeted toward children, but this snowball-flinging plot was obviously created for adults. Writer-directors Stephane Aubier and Vincent Patar make it work marvelously. Plot turns that could be boring or overly cheesy are mesmerizing when played out in stop-action. Watching Horse, Cowboy and Indian rebuild their house day after day becomes a fascinating montage of little bricks being glued together, while Horse's awkward attempts to woo the local music teacher culminate in a hilarious scene with two plastic horses dancing.



This style also gives the plastic cast an enormous "acting" range, though the figures themselves barely move more than rocking back and forth. Their dialogue is pleasantly paced and varied. Cowboy and Indian provide easy laughs with their slapstick antics and subsequent reprimands, while Horse's grave observations and general awkwardness keep things in a state of constant amusement. They always act as a trio, and have the chemistry of any well-formed ensemble cast.It is clearly the work of very in tune, and well tuned, minds.



A Town Called Panic is a movie about plastic toys that manages to be whimsical instead of juvenile, entertaining instead of rambling, and endearing instead of dumb. If you're ready to escape Hollywood's so-called original comedies, take a trip to Panic. It's not a fix-all equation, but it's a very refreshing change.
Full Post