Panique au village (A Town Called Panic) (2009)

In a year when emerging technologies dominated the popular film landscape, it's curious that stop motion films also enjoyed a comeback in 2009. Then again, the 3D craze that gripped movie-goers is itself a throwback to kitschy 50 films. In any case, when Pixar and Dreamworks are dominating the animated scene with big budget, computer generated affairs, films like Wes Anderson's incredibly entertaining The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Coraline (which I haven't seen, but for a stop motion film to earn as much as that did is extremely impressive) have been a welcome addition to the film landscape (not to say anything too bad about Pixar, Up was quite excellent). And then there's a movie like the Belgian film Panique Au Village, based on the show of the same title.

If stop motion films have the inherent quality of being shaky and jerky, Panique elevates this more to being in an earthquake than airplane turbulence. The original show episodes were about 5 minutes long, and they were filled with constant motion and humor. Imagine that stretched to about an hour and a half.

I was initially worried that people used to making shows so short would struggle to make a story interesting enough to watch for over an hour. I wasn't expecting a great story, mind you, just simply something to hold together the incredible, incessant action on the screen. Miraculously, the filmmakers achieved this perfectly.

The story follows the characters Horse, Cowboy and Indian, as does the show. In the film, Horse, the responsible member of the trios' household pursues a romantic interest in his music teacher, while Cowboy and Indian simply run amok. The film begins with them realizing that they have forgotten Horse's birthday ("Same as every June 21"), and their panicked attempt to find him a gift quickly. Their gift ends up destroying their house, which they must then rebuild. When their rebuilt house is continuously stolen at night while they sleep at a neighbor's home, they set out for an adventure.

What makes the film so interesting is undoubtedly attributable to the film's roots as a 5 minute television show. As a result, there isn't so much a plot as a bunch of small adventures that happen consecutively. Every 10-15 minutes, it almost feels like a different movie. And each little story is as frenetically fun as the one before it.

If I could describe this movie in one word, it would be "fun". The animation is top notch, given how much work had to be put into all the scenes, and as a package, the film is just excellent at every level. I can't analyze this film too seriously though, just because it was mindless fun, and nothing more. Unlike a lot of Hollywood films that attempt the mindless fun approach, however, Panique isn't stupid, it's just absurd. From the films I've seen from 2009 now, I would probably place this only behind Antichrist, and The White Ribbon as far as favorites go (with the previously mentioned Anderson film also somewhere near the top).