October 17, 2010
Unless you happen to be friends with a French speaking child prodigy who has been allowed to drink way too much sunshine-yellow enhanced orange squash and let loose with their set of plastic dolls house characters, a farmyard set, a tub of Plasticine and a stop motion camera, then you will have never seen anything like this before. Mad, comic, ludicrous, bizarre, brain achingly frenetic, Belgian weirdness. Still no clearer?
I could attempt to give a synopsis of the plot but that would require a retelling of the entire tale due to the incredible pace with which each scene moves into the next with seemingly little or no discernable thread. The closest comparison might be to liken it to Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python animations in which he creates fantasy lands and fills them with absurdity. It feels like the film makers approached each day of action with the absence of any plan whatsoever, and quite literally made it up as they went along. Despite the painstakingly time consuming nature of this form or animation, which would allow for deliberation and careful plot development, one senses that each moment of random madness and inventiveness came spewing spontaneously forth.
Someone in the room might have said ‘hey, wouldn’t it be totally cool if there was an enormous, moving mechanical penguin, in which two mad scientists live in squalor and chaos, entertaining themselves by hurling meteor sized snowballs at innocent woodland animals – oh, and they would need to have access to a lot of snow, so let’s have our protagonists (a plastic horse, cowboy and Indian figurines) climb their way out from the centre of the earth (I really can’t get into that now!) into an arctic landscape, in which the traction footed penguin roams’. The joy of using toy animals and modelling clay to bring one’s childlike nonsensical vision to life, is that you can do whatever the hell you like, and those mad Belgian creators have a field day doing just that.
The real humour of the dialogue comes from the incongruity of the matter of fact, obvious statement and almost mundane conversational style, spoken in the context of the loony world and surreal events unfolding.
There was more going on in this film than it is possible to appreciate with a single viewing. Each background set, no matter how crudely constructed, would merit closer scrutiny. Each scene is filled with details of design and animation that the non-French speaking viewer would be hard pushed to fully take in, such is the task of watching the action, listening and attempting to read the subtitles simultaneously. However, I bet the creators wouldn’t be too upset that some of the visual jokes are missed, as I feel sure they had plenty of fun themselves, just thinking them up.
If you want a predictable plot and logical scene transitions, delivered with slick artistry and traditional humour, then you may not tolerate the onslaught of anarchy and nonsense that this madcap muddle of cartoon, collage and model making mayhem delivers. However, if you are open to a bit of the utterly odd, then welcome to a town called panic!
I could attempt to give a synopsis of the plot but that would require a retelling of the entire tale due to the incredible pace with which each scene moves into the next with seemingly little or no discernable thread. The closest comparison might be to liken it to Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python animations in which he creates fantasy lands and fills them with absurdity. It feels like the film makers approached each day of action with the absence of any plan whatsoever, and quite literally made it up as they went along. Despite the painstakingly time consuming nature of this form or animation, which would allow for deliberation and careful plot development, one senses that each moment of random madness and inventiveness came spewing spontaneously forth.
Someone in the room might have said ‘hey, wouldn’t it be totally cool if there was an enormous, moving mechanical penguin, in which two mad scientists live in squalor and chaos, entertaining themselves by hurling meteor sized snowballs at innocent woodland animals – oh, and they would need to have access to a lot of snow, so let’s have our protagonists (a plastic horse, cowboy and Indian figurines) climb their way out from the centre of the earth (I really can’t get into that now!) into an arctic landscape, in which the traction footed penguin roams’. The joy of using toy animals and modelling clay to bring one’s childlike nonsensical vision to life, is that you can do whatever the hell you like, and those mad Belgian creators have a field day doing just that.
The real humour of the dialogue comes from the incongruity of the matter of fact, obvious statement and almost mundane conversational style, spoken in the context of the loony world and surreal events unfolding.
There was more going on in this film than it is possible to appreciate with a single viewing. Each background set, no matter how crudely constructed, would merit closer scrutiny. Each scene is filled with details of design and animation that the non-French speaking viewer would be hard pushed to fully take in, such is the task of watching the action, listening and attempting to read the subtitles simultaneously. However, I bet the creators wouldn’t be too upset that some of the visual jokes are missed, as I feel sure they had plenty of fun themselves, just thinking them up.
If you want a predictable plot and logical scene transitions, delivered with slick artistry and traditional humour, then you may not tolerate the onslaught of anarchy and nonsense that this madcap muddle of cartoon, collage and model making mayhem delivers. However, if you are open to a bit of the utterly odd, then welcome to a town called panic!