A Town Called Panic

Directed by Stephanie Aubier & Vincent Patar

At Film Forum Dec. 16-29

Runtime: 75 min.

Based on a Belgian children’s TV series, A Town Called Panic (Panique au village) is a small but significant shade of quality shy of its peers at Aardman Studios, the British studio that produces Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit claymation cartoons. Though they both peddle in absurdist humor, A Town Called Panic has a much more frenetic pace. Following the hectic misadventures of Horse, Indian and Cowboy, co-writer/director team Stephanie Aubier and Vincent Patar’s film is proudly unfocussed. This reaps modest chuckles instead of memorable yuks, which for a 75-minute film is more than a little disappointing. Had Aubier and Patar taken a page from Park’s book, they would’ve known to focus less on their film’s broader jokes and instead on its more resigned playfulness.

Channeling the madcap, surreal humor of the “Penny Cartoons” showcased in Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Panique au village begins, like most shaggy dog jokes, with a rambling set-up: Cowboy and Indian (Aubier and Bruce Ellison), both miniature figurines of their name-sakes, have forgotten to buy their equine friend Horse (Patar) a birthday present so they decide to build him a barbecue pit. They set out to order 50 bricks for its construction and end up accidentally ordering several million more than they need. Then their house sinks so they have to sleep in their neighbors’ barn and their attempts to rebuild their house are thwarted by some thieving mer-people and that’s well before the scientists and their snowball-chucking robot penguin show up. Which adds up to about 60 minutes of funny "adequate" and 15 of funny "ha-ha."

Although all of Panic’s pratfalls are ancillary in that they’re the visual equivalent of an avalanche of one-liners, its more subdued, off-hand jokes are almost always the ones that garner chortles. While it’s cute to note that the proud-looking Indian has a voice like a Gallic Eddie Deezen and that the manly Cowboy’s accent oddly resembles a certain famous rodent’s, what’s funny about their bromance is the fact that they sleep in adjacent but separate beds ala Bert and Ernie. Though the film’s fast-and-loose subtitles certainly don’t help its humor—when a goat curses “Merde” under his breath, it’s translated as “Naughty cows”—Aubier and Patar have already done their audience a disservice by confusing zeal with bombast.