Panique au village
Cinematography:
Jan VandenbusscheCast:
Stéphane Aubier, Jeanne Balibar, Bouli Lanners, Vincent Patar, Benoît Poelvoorde, Nicolas Buysse, Alexandre von Sivers, Ben Tesseur, Brian LykkeVOD (1)
Plots(1)
Based on the Belgian animated cult TV series (which was released by Wallace & Gromit’s Aardman Studios), Panic stars three plastic toys named Cowboy, Indian and Horse who share a rambling house in a rural town that never fails to attract the weirdest events. Cowboy and Indian’s plan to gift Horse with a homemade barbeque backfires when they accidentally buy 50 million bricks. Whoops! This sets off a perilously wacky chain of events as the trio travel to the center of the earth, trek across frozen tundra and discover a parallel underwater universe of pointy-headed (and dishonest!) creatures. Each speedy character is voiced - and animated - as if they are filled with laughing gas. With panic a permanent feature of life in this papier-mâché burg, will Horse and his equine paramour - flame-tressed music teacher Madame Longray (Jeanne Balibar) - ever find a quiet moment alone? A sort of Gallic Monty Python crossed with Art Clokey on acid, A Town Called Panic is zany, brainy and altogether insane! (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (4)
Probably the craziest and most hectic animated film I have ever seen, it won’t let you catch your breath for a minute…
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It takes a lot of courage to build an entire film on clumsily moving characters, but as you can see, you can still have a great time. The 65 minutes are packed with so many casual and crazy ideas that they had me remembering my early childhood several times, back when I used to play with stiff Indians and cowboys. The story doesn't make much sense, but it's so brisk and properly crazy that it won me over after ten minutes and kept me pleasantly entertained for the next hour, making me feel like when I was young and played alone. And from now on I want to have a horse as a pet!
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If this film is surreal, then children's imagination is also surreal. Give a mischievous youth the appropriate characters and he will invent the same amount of none-sense. Mix in an adult experience with a rubbish plot and you have A Town Called Panic, something like Wallace and Gromit on light drugs, cut with the crazy kinetics of South Park. A very pleasant regression and cleansing.
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I do not share the general enthusiasm for this feature film, even though it is undoubtedly original, but it is also a film that would stand out much more as a series of short films. Such a series apparently exists and I gladly give it my attention once I get a chance to see it. A Town Called Panic is built on the sheer craziness of its characters and plot, where one wonders what the screenwriter and artists were thinking before creating something like this. But as I mentioned before, a feature film needs something more than just disrespect for established rules and great imagination. Overall impression: 55%.
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Photo © Gébéka Films
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