Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Boring

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

There is only one other reviewer for this (should-be recognized) film by Segundo de Chomón, and he made a good point about how, in the end, this 8-minute movie is strictly effects with no real story. I can understand his point as many of these trick films were normally plot-less and had no story whatsoever--nobody had yet started using the effects to tell actual stories. However, "A Panicky Picnic" is actually quite a bit of fun despite this issue.The movie begins rather slowly. Some people (a man and a woman, and these two twin guys) embark on a journey in a wagon, to go and have a picnic. Arriving in the woods (which is a hand-painted set instead of an actual woods, for whatever reason) they unpack and slice open the food, and find it infested with vermin. Well, that's that so they pack up and go to stay the night in a haunted house. But nothing goes right. The pots in the fireplace explode, and through the clever use of stop-motion animation, one of them grows a face (which was fun, although this sequence was too short). The man has this weird and nonsensical (animated) dream, which drives him crazy and they all rush into the courtyard where a lot of madness ensues.The film is weird and absurd (and, believe it or not, is believed to have influenced Luis Bunuel's work greatly, some say). There is plenty of cutting, which is good and shows how Chomón was moving past the stagy scene-by-scene films, which was the standard style of story-telling earlier in the days of cinema. The effects are well executed and the food infestation visuals are effective. I only wish the clay-mation head sequence lasted longer! I would say not to try looking for a story at all it if you watch it, because there's nothing TO understand. Just enjoy the visuals and have fun.Also, on a side note, that reviewer also failed to notice the film's french original title was "Une Excursion Incohérente", or, "An Incoherent Excursion". No wonder the film is so incomprehensible!

IMDb attributes this film to Camille de Morlhon, while the copy of the film I saw indicated that Segundo de Chomón was responsible. Judging by the special effects, I could understand the film being attributed to Chomón but think IMDb might be right here as the style doesn't seem to be exactly his. Normally, you'd have expected Chomón to have more natural outdoor sets, a bit more subtlety and a bit more artistry."A Fancy Picnic" starts off well enough. Four folks head out in a wagon (about circa 1830) on a picnic. However, their food is infested with mice, worms and bugs (all used by stopping the camera and making the food appear to become infested when the film was restarted). Then, they all return home and the narrative of the story gets completely lost. There is a lengthy animated section (one of the earliest known, actually) that really contributes nothing to the film and is more a distraction than anything else. In fact, the entire last 75% of the film is a non-stop demonstration of camera tricks, costumes and beautiful sets but none of this conveys a coherent story. All in all, there are a lot of neat tricks in a film that doesn't seem to say anything other than 'hey, look at my camera tricks!'.