A Town Called Panic ***'

Don’t judge a book by its cover?  And don’t judge a film by its milk advert.  A new personal code I intend to live by.  I find this advert quite unbelievably annoying, but 70 minutes of a basically identical premise is somehow extremely funny.

It’s Horse’s birthday, and Cowboy and Indian have forgotten to buy him a present.  They decide to build him a barbecue, but don’t have enough bricks so buy some off the internet.  But, zut alors, they accidentally buy 50 million bricks instead of 50.  This leads to a manic adventure taking in the centre of the earth, the North Pole, and the depths of the ocean, with barely time to breathe.

Watching A Town Called Panic feels a bit like watching Postman Pat, or Pingu, on speed.  By the end I was exhausted.  The animation is delightfully crap, and hides what was undoubtedly an enormous amount of hard work.  It’s not quite Adam and Joe Show levels of charming unsophistication, but it doesn’t feel far off.  (Yes, I know that reference is about ten years out of date now, and isn’t really relevant anyway, but I wanted to link this clip in somehow, just because it makes me laugh).

If you like your comedy clever and highbrow, then this film is not really for you.  If, however, you want to escape in silliness for an hour, with the main thought running through your head being ‘this is actually insane’, then I highly recommend.

I would have given this four stars, but took off half because I think you have to be in a very specific mood to enjoy this, otherwise funny could too easily become being-repeatedly-bashed-over-the-head irritating.