A Town Called Panic

Three plastic toys sharing a house: Cowboy, Indian and Horse. Cowboy and Indian decide to build a barbecue as a birthday present for Horse, mistype the number of zeros on the brick order, and fifty million bricks arrive at the door. The house collapses, and from there the story goes to the bottom of the sea, the centre of the earth and the ice. The film is not interested in plot. It is interested in speed: it never holds an idea for more than two minutes, keeps moving to the next absurdity, and ignores logic on purpose. The form is stop motion, deliberately crude: the figures move together with the bases they are moulded on, mouths do not move, the sets are cardboard. That cheapness is part of the joke. The source is the Belgian television series of short episodes by the same team; the feature screened at Cannes in 2009. Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar directed and voice the two main characters themselves. Who it is for: viewers who like absurd humour, stop motion and films that work for a child and an adult at once. Who it is not for: anyone who wants to relax. The film shouts, its pace is exhausting, and it does not slow down once in eighty minutes.