This stop motion animated film from Belgium plays out like a long-form episode of Robot Chicken without and pop culture references.  I love what they do with the Robot Chicken show, especially the Star Wars episodes, but almost all of that humor seems to rely on pop culture references and in-jokes.  I find most of that funny, but it's not situational comedy that can appeal to just anyone.  Smartly, A Town Called Panic doesn't rely on culturally-specific character archetypes or on the irony of known characters doing something out-of-character.  Instead, it just presents us with a town populated by lovable figurines who live in a universe with almost no discernable rules.

The film centers around Horse, Cowboy, and Indian--three unlikely friends who share a house and don't appear to have much that they need to do every day.  Their neighbor the farmer only speaks by yelling and his wife Janine always carries a jug to water the flowers on their farm.  Policeman directs traffic and investigates crime.  Postman rides a bicycle.  The farm animals all stand around outside when they are not taking music lessons.  The whole movie springs from a childlike view of the world, and that's one of the ways that it differs from the ironic, forever-adolescent work of Adult Swim.  A child doesn't know the mail carrier's name and doesn't have any concept that the mailman might have a life outside of delivering mail, so quite logically the film's postman is simply called Postman and he quite simply delivers mail.  When the horse needs to get somewhere, he drives a car.  The car isn't magical and it's not impervious to damage, so it plays by some kind of child logic, but it does fit a horse.

There are sections of the film that move at a frantic pace with one visual gag or ridiculous nonsequiter after another.  It's a bit like listening to a child tell a story where every action is followed by 'and then...' and another action.  There are some slower stretches where the film actually develops some characters and feels a little bit more adult, but without those, I think it would be too much of a sensory onslaught. 

I don't know why this kind of thing never seems to come from people in the US.  We like our comedy dirty or sarcastic or full of very specific references to things that show how clever we are.  From Adult Swim to Saturday Night Live to the thousands of comedy shorts uploaded to YouTube, there seems to be a common thread that humor for adults has to somehow come from an adult point of view.  It sure is refreshing to be able to laugh at something that's funny simply because it's joyous and absurd and not because it's making fun of people.  This movie feels like a child telling a fantastic story about his toys, but it's made with enough heart and thought that it doesn't veer off into randomness for no reason.  A Town Called Panic is a wonderful example of the way that the style and technical approach to a film actual make it work.  The interplay between the storytelling and the animation style is necessary.  The animated figurines reinforce the point of view in a way that drawings or computer-animated images could not.  Though people say this all the time about well-made animated films, this definitely seems like the kind of movie that kids and adults can enjoy equally--as long as the kids can read subtitles.