Das Nilpferd Hugo

Hugo the Hippo is an excellent children's movie. I don't think I would have been able to spell hippopotamus without it. This movie has brought back some of my fondest childhood memories and I think it should be made available on DVD. In terms of content, it was a cartoon beyond its years, the storyline, the colours and the music. The sharks were humorous and quite memorable but the message even more, how easily we forget, discard and turn against people( in the movie that lovable hippo) once they are of no use to us. I hope that this movie makes a come back and is not lost for all eternity. It's just simply phantasmagorical!

Now the television schedules (in England, at least) are crammed with home improvement, bargain-hunting, house-hunting and cookery shows in the afternoons, the chances of any of the terrestrial broadcasters digging out a complete obscurity like this to occupy a couple of hours of screen time on a slow afternoon are slender, to say the least. But back in the eighties, the BBC did just that, and guess what, I watched it. And it's a testament to the overwhelming weirdness of this Hungarian-American co-production that I can still remember large chunks of it, over twenty years later. To begin with, the eponymous hero appears briefly during the opening titles, only to vanish again for at least half an hour. (Imagine AN American TAIL re-edited so Feivel is nowhere to be seen, and you'll appreciate how confusing this is.) There's a supremely bizarre bit of animation where one of the characters gets his elaborately waxed moustache tweaked and stretched, complete with a boingy sound effect that causes him to go boss-eyed. Probably hilarious if you're stoned, but to a child, quite disturbing. Speaking of which, the infamous 'hippo cull' scene is represented in an abstract manner - clouds in vague hippo shapes are struck by lightning - but it's still pretty unpleasant. In fact, this film is pretty cold and uninvolving throughout, a sad state of affairs hardly helped by the strange-looking production design, all muddy colours, wobbly lines, bloated forms and that uniquely European bleakness reminiscent of Jan Svankmajer, only not as compelling. Then, to cap it all, we get songs by the Osmonds! This isn't so much an awful film as a deeply misguided one, not so much phantasmagorical as a rather bad trip.

My buddy found a VHS from 1980-something with this movie on it, and I was shocked and amazed that anything this good could come outta the 70's. Couple things I noticed: The Animation rocks the casbah - the colours all meld very nicely, the segues are all prefect (you can't even tell they're there until the next scene starts), and the motion of the characters is a lost art; the story provokes every emotion you can have - sadness, envy, happiness, disappointment, fear... the list goes on; the songs are so good, one of my friends sampled a couple of them and uses them, to this day, in his house sets...

I definitely agree with Peter's comments - IT'S GOLD I TELL YOU! GOLD!

I just have to comment on this movie! It's one of those films you see as a kid and get vague flashbacks of forever and wonder 'Where do I get those images of cartoon men in turbans shouting at hippos??' Thankfully, my brother is 4 years older than me and he was always there to tell me these memories were from a real film; 'Hugo the Hippo'and that I wasn't a crazy person. I'm adding this comment just to say, that if you haven't seen this film for years and years and have happy/crazy memories of it, leave it that way! Please don't watch it again as you will be disappointed! Oh, OK, maybe just once, but never again! This movie is crazy! Check out the lyrics to the song that goes 'It's really real, this story is real, it really is real, it's really real...' Odd.

Yes, I did call this a candidate for the greatest film ever made. Its a masterpiece of hippo films. A truly magical experience for everyone who takes part in it. Its about this hippo. This hippo named Hugo. He's the prince of the hippo's. He saves the day. Their are songs along the way and some great animation. It's gold, I tell you, GOLD!!!