PANIQUE AU VILLAGE (A TOWN CALLED PANIC) (Belg/Fr/Lux 2009) ****
Directed by Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar

This is the silliest piece of stop-motion animated nonsense to be shown ever at a theatre this or any year.  But this is not necessarily a bad thing – if you love hilarity like that takes you to new heights of absurdity.

A family made up of Horse, Cowboy and Indian with appearances of thief bats, Santa Claus, flying cows, and 50 million bricks.  But A TOWN CALLED PANIC is the funniest film I have seen so far last year at the Toronto International Film Festival.  Based on the manic TV series by Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar, the hilarity of their characters fortunately holds on the big screen.  It all starts when Cowboy and Indian decide to get Horse a cardeau for his birthday.  After all, what is a birthday without a gift?  So, when ordering 50 bricks on line, the ‘0’ key gets stuck and 50,000,000…..0000 bricks get delivered.  They hide the mistake by piling the bricks above their abode, which obviously collapses during the night.  One things leads to another, and before you know it the trio take on a journey to the centre of the earth and the south (or is it the north) pole.

To those unfamiliar, Belge animators Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar met as students at Belgium’s School of Visual Arts, “La Cambre”, where they created the hand drawn characters Pic Pic the magic pig and André the evil horse, which would later be the stars of their trilogy of Pic Pic André Show in 1988 and their animation company Pic Pic André.  They have brought their unique brand of humour to European audiences for 15 years.

PANIQUE AU VILLAGE has to be seen to be believed, imagination gone totally out of control, but in the most delectable way!