A Town Called Panic

This amusingly whimsical film employs plastic toy figurines and stop-motion animation to spin a zany tale of three housemates—Horse, Cowboy, and Indian—who experience a series of oddball adventures. The nonsense begins when Cowboy and Indian, needing a quick birthday present for Horse, decide to build him a barbecue. But they accidentally order 50 million bricks instead of 50, and the huge piles tip over and crush their house. When the new walls they try to construct are stolen each night by a family of weird sea creatures, the central trio follow the thieves underwater, eventually finding themselves in a wintry world where—among other things—some mad scientists have built a giant penguin robot that hurls enormous snowballs onto unsuspecting people. A Town Called Panic also features a romantic subplot about Horse's attempt to ingratiate himself with the local music teacher by signing up for her piano lessons, as well as another thread involving the threesome's voluble neighbor, his wife, and their family tractor. None of this makes a lick of sense, of course, but in telling the nutty tale, filmmakers Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar exhibit both a great deal of invention and infectious high spirits. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include a “La Fabrique de Panique” behind-the-scenes documentary (55 min.), deleted scenes (8 min.), interviews with filmmakers Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier (5 min.), test shot comparisons (2 min.), the “Obsessive Compulsive” short chosen by the filmmakers as winner of Zeitgeist's Stop Motion Animation Contest (2 min.), a photo gallery, and trailers. Bottom line: a fine extras package for a winning film.] (F. Swietek)