If you’re looking for a straightforward, reasonable plot for children, you’re not going to find it in this eccentric stop-motion animated comedy. That’s because from the reasonable panic over forgetting a friend’s birthday, A Town Called Panic spirals into a series of fantastical consequences, including an order of 50 million bricks, a journey to the center of the earth, and their unexpected detour to the northern tundra. But to be fair, logic is not really what children look for. If anything, the weirdness of Cowboy, Indian, and Horse’s adventures feels reminiscent of a child playing with mishmashed toy sets. Like the stop-motion medium, anything can happen, with enough imagination, and A Town Called Panic has quite the amount of frenzy to spare.
"A heady and utterly unapologetic roller-coaster ride into a hyper-vivid, hyperactive world created from cheap children's toys."
— Tom Seymour
Cowboy and Indian's only wish was to come up with a brilliant idea for Mr Horse's birthday, but when their plan ends up in utter disaster, they'll need to travel the world and back to make things right again.
European Film Awards
1 nomination
César Awards
1 nomination
"The frenetic scenarios should play fairly well as energizing for kids and ridiculous for adults."
— Nicolas Rapold