Rent The Hippopotamus (2017)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Ted Wallace (Roger Allam), lapsed poet and disgraced theatre critic, is summoned to his friends Lord and Lady Logan's Norfolk manor to investigate a series of unexplained miracle healings. Ted tracks down the perpetrator of the phenomena, his fifteen-year-old godson David Logan (Tommy Knight), whose parents believe he has healing hands. Unaware of David's disturbingly unorthodox methods, the Logans are now set on sharing their son's "gift" with the world. With a poet's passion for the truth, Ted hurries to debunk the miracles - and save a young man from a lifetime of embarrassment.
- Actors:
- Roger Allam, Tim Charles, Rod Glenn, Amanda Holt, Amy Marchant, Adrian Bouchet, Simon Markey, Claire Lacey, Andrew Alexander, Russell Tovey, Paul Bown, Emily Berrington, Dean Ridge, Thaila Zucchi, Fiona Shaw, Matthew Modine, Tommy Knight, John Standing, Benedict Taylor, Lyne Renee
- Directors:
- John Jencks
- Producers:
- Alexa Seligman, Jay Taylor
- Writers:
- Stephen Fry, Blanche McIntyre, Tom Hodgson, John Finnemore, Robin Hill
- Studio:
- Network
- Genres:
- Comedy
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 03/07/2017
- Run Time:
- 89 minutes
- Languages:
- English Dolby Digital 2.0, English Dolby Digital 5.1
- Subtitles:
- English
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 2.39:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Book to Screen
- British Comedy Special
- Making-Of Featurette
- Extensive Interviews with Cast and Crew
More like The Hippopotamus
Reviews (1) of The Hippopotamus
Great adaption of Stephen Fry's best-seller. - The Hippopotamus review by NP
Condensing Stephen Fry’s mammoth story into a 90 minute film cannot have been an easy task, with its bulging cast list and wealth of set-pieces, but director John Jencks makes a good fist of it.
I’m not sure anyone other than Fry himself could do justice to the role of Ted Wallace, or at least so I thought before watching Roger Allam in the role. Ensuring a jaded, disillusioned, permanently bad tempered alcoholic is so likeable must have been tricky, but it works here. In fact most of the characters as written, are distinctly dislikeable – or perhaps flawed would be a better word. If they were not, they wouldn’t be so interesting, or the story so entertaining. Bringing Wallace’s endless tirade of expletives to life so hilariously is done as well as it could possibly be.
It’s true to say that, with so many characters, some are distinctly under-written and don’t feature quite as heavily as they might, but as far as I remember from the book, no relevant scene has been excised, and no character has been forgotten.
Greatly entertaining. My score is 8 out of 10.