Sat 5 Sep 2020
A Movie Review by David Vineyard: THE HIPPOPOTAMUS (2017).
Posted by Steve under Films: Comedy/Musicals[18] Comments
THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. Lightyear Entertainment, 2017. Roger Allam, Mathew Modine, Fiona Shaw, Tim McInnerny, Emily Berrington, Geraldine Sommerville, John Standing, Tommy Knight, Dean Ridge. Screenplay by Blanche McIntyre, Tom Hodgson, John Finnemore, & Robin Hill, based on the novel by Stephen Fry. Directed by John Jencks. Available on DVD, as well as streaming on Amazon Prime.
To begin with, Ted Wallace (Roger Allam) has committed original sin, he’s a poet, worse still he’s a successful published poet even though it has been five years since the wrote a line. These days he makes his living at an even worse crime: he “commits journalism.†He is a theatrical critic.
At least he is until he blows up during a particularly odious production and is escorted out by the police after having sucker punched the director.
Ted is miserable and self destructive, and now he is broke as well, but Ted is about to be thrown a lifeline by an unlikely source, his goddaughter Jane (Emily Berrington) who is dying of cancer and recently in remission.
Jane is convinced she has been saved by a miracle, the nature of which she will not reveal, but wishes Ted to investigate, at her Uncle, Lord John Logan (Mathew Modine)’s estate (“he did something unspeakable for Margaret Thatcher†to earn his knighthood, we are told).
Ted is more than willing for the 25,000 Sterling offered, but things are a bit strained between him and his old school chum John, but then things are a bit constrained between him and Jane’s Mother, John’s sister (Geraldine Sommevile) too. In fact things are a bit strained between Ted and the world, but if he is just careful he can get by claiming to be concerned about his nephew young David (Tommy Knight) who is sensitive, awkward, and wants to be a poet.
Those are just some of the odd things about David, as Ted will soon learn, because though there isn’t a corpse or a murder in sight, The Hippopotamus (Ted) is a manor house mystery in the mode of Agatha Christie replete with eccentric characters, carefully hidden family secrets, and a reluctant but acerbic and quite able sleuth in Ted himself.
John Logan once saw his father save a man’s life, and he has believed his father had a gift all his life. Now he thinks it skipped a generation and is in his son David, who it seems has performed three actual miracles, starting my saving his mother’s life. John wants to protect David from being exploited, but is also a bit too in awe of that supposed gift.
Just how David performed most of those miracles though is among the more hilarious and scandalous things about this tale.
Most of the laughs here are of the quiet variety, but real enough. Despite the constant flow of acid and obscenity from Ted, the film is gentle as very nearly as everyone involved, but Ted has a desperate need to believe in a miracle that ultimately will do more harm than good. He is an unlikely hero, but before it is over he and several others will be saved, though not without cost.
There is even a delightful great detective moment when kicking the bucket puts all the pieces of the puzzle together.
Suspects include Tim McInnerny as a flamboyant homosexual who lives on the estate; Fiona Shaw as David’s protective, and sane, Mother; a house guest and her plain daughter who pose another threat to David; Jane’s mother who still loathes Ted after their breakup; and Simon (Dean Ridge) David’s sane nice brother.
John Standing has a nice bit as Podmore, the aging and rather bored butler.
All in all, it builds up to a satisfying conclusion with Ted even getting to play at Hercule Poirot at a gathering of the suspects when he puts the pieces of the puzzle in the right order that everyone else has jumbled up in their own needs and hopes. As in a Christie novel everyone sees the same things, but only Ted sees them as they are and not as everyone would like them to be.
The novel is by Stephen Fry, himself an acerbic actor, comic, and commentator who has appeared in numerous movies, television shows (a semi regular role on Bones), was teamed with actor Hugh Laurie as Jeeves to Laurie’s Wooster and in a variety series, and who has written several novels, one a modern version of The Count of Monte Cristo. Fry is one of those jack of all literary and artistic trades that seem to appear when needed in British entertainment and enrich us all.
It is almost impossible to describe anything from Fry without the words, wicked, delicious, delightful, playful, sinful, arch, amusing, intelligent, or barbed, and that perfectly sums up this bright tale where the laying on of hands becomes a different kind of miracle in the mind of an oversexed teen than you would ever expect.
Feel the need to escape, but to do so without sacrificing brain cells, then this is perfect for you. Literate, well played, vicious and kind at the same time, arch and human, nasty and heartfelt, it is a delight as novel or film. There is a definite Ealing comedy feel to it, with a touch of Oscar Wilde, the zing of Monty Python, and just enough black humor (or at least dark gray) to leaven the whole thing.
We are in those delightful British waters where dwelt Oscar Wilde, John Mortimer, P. G. Wodehouse, Kingsley Amis, Simon Raven, Iris Murdoch, George Orwell, Timothy Findlay, and in a comic mood Graham Greene, and it is refreshing indeed.
September 5th, 2020 at 9:02 pm
The wonders of the miracle age. I’d never heard of this movie until David sent me this review. I read it, I posted it, and five minutes later, here I am watching it, all without moving from my chair.
And do you know what? I’m liking it just fine.
September 5th, 2020 at 9:27 pm
No, I’ll take that back. Halfway through, and I’m loving it. Thanks,David!
September 5th, 2020 at 9:53 pm
It’s entertaining and bright, but not all that great then suddenly it makes that turn and a good movie becomes a very good one and a surprisingly moving one. Hard to convey that without giving too much away.
September 6th, 2020 at 6:27 am
“Lord John Logan … did something unspeakable for Margaret Thatcher†to earn his knighthood, we are told”
In a spirit of pedantry:
If he has a knighthood, he’s Sir John Logan. If he was given a peerage, he’s either Baron John Logan of Whatnot or Baron Whatnot.
“Fiona Shaw as David’s protective, and sane, Mother, a house guest and her plain daughter…”
Are all these characters played by Fiona Shaw – it’s something one of the more eccentric directors might do – or are they played by three separate actors?
September 6th, 2020 at 9:19 am
I remember the passage about the Thatcher, but not in detail. I do know that Logan was a Lord, for what that’s worth. As for Fiona Shaw, this looks like a situation where the judicious use of semi-colons would be warranted, so I have.
September 6th, 2020 at 8:21 am
It’s funny. I was just looking at the book yesterday, trying to decide whether or not to read it. I had no idea there was a movie version.
September 6th, 2020 at 9:19 am
Coincidences are alive and well!
September 6th, 2020 at 11:52 am
I couldn’t help but notice that the lead actor here appears to be named Roger Allam.
… and appears to be so identified in the trailer and the poster grab …
… and appears to have had a considerable career in GB films and TV …
… and where in Heck did Steve come from?
(Maybe the same place as ‘Charles Greenwood’, as above?)
September 6th, 2020 at 12:09 pm
Roger that, Mike. With no other explanation handy, I think the miscue in the case was caused by an insidious combination of Steve Allen and Stephen Fry. It’s fixed already. Thanks!
September 6th, 2020 at 2:52 pm
FYI – it is available on Amazon Prime.
September 6th, 2020 at 2:56 pm
Right. Thanks, Jeff. I should have said that way back in Comment #1 !
September 6th, 2020 at 8:44 pm
Spell check rides again, when I ran it through I caught that it changed Allam to Allan, and changed it, but not that it changed Roger Allam to Steve Allan. The damn thing not only makes suggestions, it incorporates them without letting you decide which is hell if you are trying to deliberately misspell something for emphasis.
I typed Clarence Greene again after to check and it changed it to Charles Greenwood for reasons known only to Spell Check.
As for the title, that’s the line in the movie, and save for their formal title they are referred to as Lord so and so, not Baron so and so as a casual reference. No Brit would have called the character Baron in that context. Mountbatten, who was an Earl, was referred to in the press often as Lord Mountbatten. Duke and up are different. Lord is a general term between knight and Duke and used rather than expecting Brits to actually understand the rather complex reality of the peerage.
Most modern “lords” are life lords meaning their title dies with them, case in point John Buchan, 1rst Baron of Tweedsmuir.
September 7th, 2020 at 3:31 am
Are you sure that “as for [Logans’s] title, that’s the line in the movie”? If he was given a knighthood, he’s Sir John Logan. He’d never be referred to as Lord Logan in any form. It’s a nice simple distinction.
Buchan/Tweedsmuir was actually succeeded by his son – also John Buchan, just to confuse matters – as 2nd Baron Tweedsmuir. Life peerages weren’t introduced until 1958. On the one hand, a life peer’s title dies with the holder, so we don’t get some of the more… eccentric… peers we used to; on the other hand, that’s encouraged Prime Ministers to create many more of them. Hereditary peers keep their titles, but between themselves they elect a small number to “represent ” them in the House of Lords.
The ultimate complication was Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, 14th Earl of Hume, who renounced his title to become Prime Minister as Sir Alec Douglas-Hume and later returned to the Lords as a life peer, Baron Hume of the Hirsel.
Hoping the spell-checker doesn’t confuse me with any of the actors – no relation!
September 7th, 2020 at 3:39 am
In fact, thinking about Lord Home/Sir Alec/Lord Home I cane across a possible explanation. If Logan “did something unspeakable for Margaret Thatcher†to earn his knighthood” that was over twenty five years before the film, so he had ample opportunities to do something even more unspeakable to earn a peerage in the meantime. As a knight and a peer he would be referred to as a lord.
September 7th, 2020 at 4:05 pm
Roger, Thanks for following up on this. That’s an explanation that might have covered the situation. But as it turns out, it’s one that, as it turns out, wasn’t necessary.
The only way to resolve the issue once and for all, I decided, was to go directly to the source. Thanks to the availability of subtitles and being able to take a photo from my phone of the screen, it appears that David’s statement about Thatcher, in quotes, was correct, but the rest, about Logan’s knighthood, not in quotes, that’s what was off. See below:
September 8th, 2020 at 6:16 am
Watching & enjoying it now — THANKS!
September 8th, 2020 at 11:04 am
Semi-irrelevant, but funny (and it has to be set up for those who aren’t At Least My Age*tm):
First, the set-up:
Lord Home/Sir Alec Douglas-Home’s family name was pronounced hume, to rhyme with fume, a fact that caused beaucoup confusion for American newsreaders at the time.
Lord Home was the Tory Defence Minister or the Foreign Secretary (can’t recall which just now; correction welcomed).
One of the British satire groups that was playing Broadway at the time – the one with Tony Hendra and Nic Ullett – did a mock newscast in the act, which included this joke (pronunciations included):
The cabinet minister Lord Home was unavailable for comment at his London hume.
Hey, I was 11 or 12; I thought it was funny …
September 8th, 2020 at 2:09 pm
You don’t want to know how old I am, but still I think it’s funny.