If pessimism is what you are into, and the prospect of cramp from seventy-five minutes of sustained laughter seems like too much bother, then DO NOT go and see A Town Called Panic – it won’t do you any good.

The big kids behind the movie, Patar and Aubier, have provided cinema audiences with one of the smartest and funniest family films for years. Unlike Toy Story, it is not interested in revealing the secret lives of toys when no-one’s looking, sparing the audience the saccharine sentimentality by taking the make-believe world of childrens’ games entirely for granted. The directors’ brand of surrealism also manages to avoid the identikit-Tim-Burton syndrome, with characterisation being one of the film’s strongest features.

Surreal moments effervesce as a symptom of the story rather than function as its motor or end goal. The plot unapologetically revels in the absurd and extreme, and maintains the humour and irrational shifts in narrative that children indulge in as it follows the three protagonists. The success of this is that though the initial setting of the village is humbly provincial, the protagonists pass through a bottomless pit and out again, traverse an arctic wasteland, and scuttle along the bottom of the sea floor.

Much has been made in other reviews of the lo-fi aesthetic of the animation when, in fact, Patar and Aubier are masters of attention to detail. Yet their most technical achievements are brought about through their games with time and space, such as hilarious slow-motion shots and a disregard for any sense of a unifying scale. For all the supposed restriction in character movement, the postman still impresses with his breakdancing skills and Stephen, the apoplectic alpha-male farmer, is a tiny plastic figurine who eats his way through an entire slice of bread the size of the table it lies on.

The film is also full of quirky voices and noises. If you (like me) still giggle at the scampering sound of Stewie’s feet in Family Guy after a gazillion episodes, then you should probably see it just for the sound effects.