It's been a surprising year for stop-motion animation, and A Town Called Panic can have a seat at the table with the two giant achievements of the year, Coraline and Fantastic Mr. Fox. What it shares with those films is a sensibility that is not quite like anything we've seen before. We may be familiar with the jerky quality of stop-motion animation, how creatures in one scene will look not quite right but somehow it all fits for the look and the story that it's being told with. In the case of A Town Called Panic, which takes characters named simply 'Horse', 'Cowboy' and 'Indian' and makes into a delirious comedy like Wallace and Gromit gone French and super-playful. This is some kind of child's imagination made into a 75 minute cartoon spectacle of feverish intensity and ridiculous absurdity. Maybe too ridiculous, actually.
Oh, it's charming for most of its running time, and the directors Aubier and Patar make this into something that, for at least the first ten minutes or so, had me giggling and smiling in anticipation for what might happen next, what craziness Indian and Cowboy would somehow get themselves into in trying to get Horse's birthday off the ground. I wonder if it's meant to really work in smaller doses; before this years ago it was a TV show (clips can be found on youtube) and it's really the kind of storytelling, not even so much animation, that's meant for short bursts of cartoonish energy ala Looney Tunes (and, again, Wallace & Gromit).
At its best, this loose story around a brick barbecue present that spirals into 50 million bricks, thieving aquamen, a robot penguin with missiles, and horses that become piano masters, has its moments. But for me it just shoved so much in without really having anywhere to go in 75 minutes of screen time (which is saying something). There are also characters that are frustrating in how little they're given to do, like the farmer Steve who screams EVERY LINE LIKE THIS (though he can go through a piece of jam-toast fast). It's like forced whimsy, and an eccentric sensibility that is hard to dismiss but never gives a moment to let the audience and characters breathe - a key matter to how Selick and Anderson got through the madness of their comic narratives.
I'm also not too sure, by the end, if the film really works better for kids or adults. At the screening I attended a few kids were present, but it was mostly college aged kids (some hipsters as well perhaps) who were there to look wide-eyed and have a laugh with the cheap plastic toys on intentionally cheap but clever sets in various mishaps. There's nothing terribly offensive to keep kids away, but I'm not sure if kids will keep up with it, or the French dialog with English subtitles. It's a very peculiar film, one that may work in smaller doses on video. In one shot its amusing, manic, stupid, glorious and very French.
Oh, it's charming for most of its running time, and the directors Aubier and Patar make this into something that, for at least the first ten minutes or so, had me giggling and smiling in anticipation for what might happen next, what craziness Indian and Cowboy would somehow get themselves into in trying to get Horse's birthday off the ground. I wonder if it's meant to really work in smaller doses; before this years ago it was a TV show (clips can be found on youtube) and it's really the kind of storytelling, not even so much animation, that's meant for short bursts of cartoonish energy ala Looney Tunes (and, again, Wallace & Gromit).
At its best, this loose story around a brick barbecue present that spirals into 50 million bricks, thieving aquamen, a robot penguin with missiles, and horses that become piano masters, has its moments. But for me it just shoved so much in without really having anywhere to go in 75 minutes of screen time (which is saying something). There are also characters that are frustrating in how little they're given to do, like the farmer Steve who screams EVERY LINE LIKE THIS (though he can go through a piece of jam-toast fast). It's like forced whimsy, and an eccentric sensibility that is hard to dismiss but never gives a moment to let the audience and characters breathe - a key matter to how Selick and Anderson got through the madness of their comic narratives.
I'm also not too sure, by the end, if the film really works better for kids or adults. At the screening I attended a few kids were present, but it was mostly college aged kids (some hipsters as well perhaps) who were there to look wide-eyed and have a laugh with the cheap plastic toys on intentionally cheap but clever sets in various mishaps. There's nothing terribly offensive to keep kids away, but I'm not sure if kids will keep up with it, or the French dialog with English subtitles. It's a very peculiar film, one that may work in smaller doses on video. In one shot its amusing, manic, stupid, glorious and very French.