A Town Called Panic (Saturday, December 19, 2009) (196)

What's more snobby in the world of animation than claymation? French claymation, of course - and with subtitles! Actually, this is a cute, film along the lines of a gonzo SpongeBob SquarePants about a small village where toy humans and toy animals live and get into all sorts of hijinks.

For Horse's birthday, his roommates Cowboy and Indian (you see, in French, you can say things like 'Indian' and just be cute and foreign and not culturally insensitive! Bonus!) decide to build him a barbecue pit. They order bricks online, but when the delivery arrives, they realize they have way too many. They stack the thousands of bricks on top of the house, leading, of course, to a gigantic mess when the roof collapses and bricks go everywhere. This is just the opening to a bunch of wild and crazy things that ensue.

The style throughout it playful and funny. The characters move like toys rather than articulated characters typical in most animated films (like the Fantastic Mr. Fox), and the high-pitched voices are hilarious, even if you don't understand the French. We never know what to expect around the next corner - and directors Vincent Patar and Stephane Aubier do a clever job throwing a few curve-balls at us.

The biggest problem with the film is that it's not totally a single storyline throughout. It is adapted from a television show where the scenes are each about five-minutes long. As a result, it's feels like a soup in a can, rather than something totally homemade. That is, the story goes in such bizarre directions (funny but weird) that it is easy to lose track of the thread and get a bit bored. I am not sure if the script was written as one story arc, or if this is just an amalgamation of a bunch of shorts (I could see it either way). In the end it feels like something that would work better as a bunch of shorts - even a few 15-minute shorts, rather than a feature. Still, it's silly and fun all around.

Stars: 2 of 4