Friday 8 October 2010

A TOWN CALLED PANIC


The medium of the moving image has allowed anyone with an idea and courage to express themselves and speak to anyone who will listen... even the weird ones!

"A Town Called Panic" is either going to be one of your instant fave films of all time OR an incomprehensible mess that will leave you headachey and bemused. One quick way to work out what camp you may settle in is ask yourself one question: do you like the Cravendale milk adverts with the crazy cow and no dialogue? If yes, then continue reading!

Directors/animators/screenwriters Vincent Patar and Stephane Aubier take the simplest story - what do you get as a birthday present for a friend that you nearly forgot about - and demand that you leave all sense behind whilst they strap electrodes to you and zap you into submission. The friend is a horse called Horse (the sensible one) and the forgetful mates are an indian called Indian (the one with half a brain) and a cowboy called... you get the picture!

The jerky animation compliments the frenetic energy perfectly and where it doesn't even deserve to look through Pixar's trash cans concerning the believable visuals, it stands head and shoulders above them for sheer lunacy and fantastic leaps of faith and ideas that appear in its short 78 minutes running time. If it were any longer you would surely need to go and lie down afterwards.

You have underwater people who have the same problems as us - where do you get the materials from to build a home for yourself; the largest mechanical penguin EVER constructed that launches the perfect snowball; a surprising solution to where you hide 500 million bricks ordered through the internet - this is the equivalent of the mad Looney Tunes cartoons but with a decidedly mad European twist to it.

Seriously, give it a go and then find yourself smirking everytime a milk advert comes on your TV - what is there to lose?

UK release date: 08/10/10
Certificate: PG
A Town Called Panic is now available on DVD.