‘A Town Called Panic’ or — The Ecstatic Bliss of Overstimulation?

It’s Horse’s birthday so Indian and Cowboy decide to build him a barbeque as a present. The only problem is when they order the necessary bricks (they’re building him a brick one) online they accidentally order 50 million instead of fifty leaving them with the quandary of what to do with 50 million bricks.

Not only that but Horse is late for his piano lessons, lessons he’s determined to attend as they’re taken by the beautiful music teacher Madame Longrée with whom Horse is very much in love. Yet when the walls to their house are stolen by mysterious, aquatic creatures it looks like Horse, Cowboy and Indian will have to…

Okay look, as I’m sure you can already tell ‘A Town Called Panic’ (2009) is absolutely insane. Based on the Belgian stop-motion sitcom of the same name it’s a furious onslaught of surrealist invention, logic-defying situations and constant mayhem. The overarching plot doesn’t matter as it’s there simply to propel us from one extraordinary moment to the next so the fact it’s so slight means it can get out of its own way and allow the ridiculous silliness free rein.

Not that it’s haphazard or ill-disciplined in the slightest, it just functions according to its own bizarre rules so even though we might be wondering how the hell we went from piano lessons for horses to a giant robot penguin it does make a sort of crazy sense and a huge part of the thrill is wondering where we’ll end up next.

The animation is deliberately crude (although in reality it’s anything but) and this rough and ready approach allows the action to be unbelievably fast and energetic. This is a world populated by toy figurines and so the movements are those of a child at play — extreme, clumsy, visually emphatic — which only powers the delirious thrust even more (there’s no gesticulatory fat to the execution of any of these movements).

If you’re looking for narrative cohesion or reserved posturing then you might want to look elsewhere as the lunacy you’re bombarded with here might be too overwhelming, but if you’re a fan of Terry Gilliam’s flights of fantasy or SpongeBob’s unrestrained anarchy then this’ll send you to heaven. Personally, I loved every single second.

If I see a more creative, imaginative or dynamic film this year I’ll happily eat my plastic Stetson.