A Town Called Panique
Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar | France, Luxembourg, Belgium | 2009 | 75 min
Our plastic heroes Cowboy, Indian and Horse get into trouble after Cowboy’s and Indian’s plans to surprise Horse with an original birthday gift end in disaster. The three friends experience bizarre adventures which take them e.g. to the centre of the Earth, to the frozen tundra and to a parallel underwater world inhabited by cunning little monsters with pointy heads. A Town Called Panic is an ideal film for the accelerated generation – the characters move almost at the speed of light and talk like they are on speed and laughing gas.
When asked a question about how the characters communicate and who comes up with what situations, Vincent Patar answered: “Hard to say… We discuss things a lot and churn out new ideas. And eventually we find out that the project is actually done. It’s like playing high-speed Ping-Pong.”
The feature film was adapted from a TV series of the same name which, thanks to dubbing by the Aardman Animation Studios, gained a cult following even beyond the borders of France and Belgium. The film boasts a unique energy emitted by the toy figurines, which nostalgically remind us of our childhood with their absurd dialogues. A Town Called Panic is unparalleled in its original artistic style and also by being the first stop-motion animated film screened in Cannes.