film, eyeballs, brain

You know, a movie doesn’t have to address the big questions in life for it to be enjoyed over here at film eyeballs brain. And like a Michael Haneke film or this impending final season of Lost, not all the questions have to be answered either: what would Cowboy and Indian do with all those bricks? Will the three friends ever get their brick walls back from the thieving sea creatures? Will Horse ever make it to the fetching Miss Longray’s piano class on time? Will Steven, the excitable farmer, be sprung from prison after being wrongly accused by the Policeman? And where did that giant mechanical penguin come from?

These are the central concerns of Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar’s riotous stop-motion animated comedy, A Town Called Panic (Panique au Village). Starring the irresponsible trio of a horse (named Horse), a cowboy (named Cowboy), and, well, a Native American with a headdress (named Indian), it’s the 75-minute-long spinoff from a series of animated shorts of the same name. This probably explains why it starts to flag midway, just a little after. One can only take so much lunacy in brief bursts.

This is not to say that the movie isn’t enjoyable as a whole; it’s extremely, stupidly, funny, and given the right circumstances (and the right crowd), your stomach should be in pain from laughing so hard in the first thirty minutes alone. Its plot premise: Cowboy and Indian, buying 50 bricks off the Internet to make a barbecue as a present for Horse’s birthday, end up buying 50 million bricks by accident. Its inspired, childlike, sense of illogic fuels the narrative – or what little there is of it – which takes our heroic trio on a journey into the lava-filled center of the earth and a frozen wasteland. (Though it’s no more surreal, really, than what you find on the Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon nowadays.) The inventive production design, with little sight gags here and there, is one reason to catch this on the big screen if you can. (One of my favorite details: an LP titled “Mega Disco Funk” propped up against the wall in Cowboy and Indian’s bedroom.)

The animation is superb, as it perfectly captures the herky-jerky manner in which plastic figurines move, particularly those still attached to their pedestals. Or, to be more precise, the way toys move if held by a kid’s peanut butter-smeared fingers. (The sound design is excellent as well; hearing that plastic click-clack as toys go up and down stairs transported me back to my young days.) The toys themselves look only slightly better than the cheap plastic junk found in coin machines – or, if you will, the sad neglected toys at the bottom of a Sterilite bin that your kid doesn’t play with but still won’t let you throw away – but that’s part of the movie’s charm. There’s zero character development, but at least Horse and his friends aren’t saddled (forgive me) with any lessons to impart to the audience. Refreshing and totally funny.

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Note: I was warned by the ticket seller that the movie was “not for kids”, which I had stupidly not anticipated. I was therefore steeling myself throughout for some Spike-and-Mike-style dismemberment and/or equine coitus, but I’m happy to report that aside from a tiny scattering of cuss words (“merde“, “salope“, and an actual “Oh shit” in English) and a short scene that features binge drinking at a house party (complete with glitter ball), A Town Called Panic is probably no more harmful than those horrible double-entendres in just about any Dreamworks release, but way, way better.

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Possibly related posts:

1. Nagisa Oshima, "A Town of Love and Hope" (1959).
2. Chuck Patton, “Dead Space: Downfall” (2008).
3. Pete Docter, "Up" (2009).