Panique au village 2009

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: So this is what deadpan slapstick surrealist Belgian stop-motion animation looks like. I like it! Read more

Mike Hale, New York Times: A Town Called Panic is an adventure story as fast-paced and exciting as any currently in theaters. Read more

Tom Keogh, Seattle Times: Pleasing to look at, Panic intentionally resembles an amateur, stop-motion project, but one can't watch it without being amazed at the extraordinary effort involved in putting together a movie like this, a few frames at a time. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: It's more clever than funny, but it's very clever. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: A Town Called Panic is a proudly Calvinist work -- I mean the comic strip character, not the philosopher -- that understands the delights of deep play. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Made with an anarchic, anything-goes spirit, this is truly a film, not to mention a town, where you never know what's going to happen next. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: With all the high-profile animated movies out there now, it would be a loss if A Town Called Panic was stampeded in the shuffle. Read more

Cary Darling, Dallas Morning News: Directors Stephane Aubier and Vincent Patar (who also provide voices) display a pleasantly warped sensibility without going for adult humor. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: It's silly, of course, but also wildly inventive and oddly adult. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Stop-motion at its messiest and nuttiest. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Because the plot is just one doggoned thing after another without the slightest logic, there's no need to watch it all the way through at one sitting. If you watch it a chapter or two at a time, it should hold up nicely. Read more

Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle: It may put you in mind of silent comedies and freewheeling animators of the past like Chuck Jones. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: If a precocious 9-year-old with attention deficit issues made a stop-motion animated movie, he might produce a triumph of supreme silliness like A Town Called Panic. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: If you've ever seen anything like A Town Called Panic, you either made it yourself or you dreamed it. Read more

Jennie Punter, Globe and Mail: All the silliness unfolds in a complex social structure, where good manners are expected, bad behaviour is punished and birthdays are not to be forgotten. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: In a world lousy with computer animation and 3-D whizz-bangery -- j'accuse, James Cameron! -- it's nice to know there's still fun to be had with nothing more than plastic figures and a little imagination. Read more

Hank Sartin, Time Out: Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Read more

David Jenkins, Time Out: If someone laced Wallace and Gromit's stockpile of West Country cheeses with hallucinogens, they might start to show some of the free-associative abandon of the characters in this trippy debut feature... Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: A Town Called Panic, which has more strident colors and less synopsizable action than a year's worth of comic-book adventures, embodies a sensibility that might be termed "extreme quirk." Read more