Hippo Review

Summary

• Hippo, directed by Mark H. Rapaport, is an avant-garde sex comedy that unleashes the quirks of Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch to their weirdest extents.
• The film takes place in the mid-’90s and revolves around a deeply troubled family, tackling subjects like narcissism, sexual urges, and unconventional education.
• Hippo doesn’t hold back in exploring taboo subjects like incest, making viewers feel uncomfortable yet offering riotous laughter moments through the characters’ absurdity.

Imagine if Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch got together to make a sex comedy, given free rein to unleash all of their quirks to their fullest, weirdest extents. That might give you an idea of what you’re in for when you watch Hippo, written and directed by Mark H. Rapaport.

It’s certainly not a traditional, ‘pure’ sex comedy. The film is incredibly dense, even though it takes place almost entirely in a single location with only a handful of characters. It’s avant-garde in a way that’s sure to make fans of experimental cinema giddy. It has incredibly sad moments, although filmgoers will probably walk away feeling much more disturbed than touched, once the whole picture has been painted.

Hippo’s Goal Is to Make You Feel as Uncomfortable as Possible

Hippo

Shot all in black and white, Hippo takes us back to the mid-’90s, to that brief moment in time when Nintendo 64 and Craigslist were both new and exciting cultural phenomena. Its subjects are three members of a deeply troubled family who recently lost their patriarch.

Adam, or “Hippo,” the eldest and only blood-related child (played by co-writer Kimball Farley), is a narcissistic 19-year-old not too far removed in personality from Holden Caulfield. He believes himself to be a god and believes his sperm to be acidic enough to defend himself and his family when war inevitably comes to their door. He plays a lot of videogames, believing them to be training for said upcoming war. Oh, and he considers himself something of a filmmaker, a characterization not shared by anyone else unfortunate enough to view his work.

Related: Best Movies About Dysfunctional Families, Ranked

His adoptive sister, Buttercup (Silver Bear winner Lilla Kizlinger), an immigrant and an orphan originally from Hungary, has reached an age where her sexual urges are becoming overwhelming, and she doesn’t know what to do about it. She longs to, as narrator Eric Roberts so delicately puts it on more than one occasion, “f*ck her brother,” Hippo being the only male figure outside of her father she’s ever had any real connection with, and she desperately wants a child.

Uncomfortable yet?

The siblings are homeschooled, in the loosest sense of the word, by their crackpot of a mother. Ethel means well and loves her children very much, but she’s more concerned with teaching her kids about the aliens she’s definitely seen than any real world skill or vocation. Neither child is particularly adept at being social and, importantly, while both are reaching physical maturity at the film’s outset, neither has any clue what sex is, nor how it pertains to life’s larger mysteries.

In a pivotal moment early on, their mother/educator attempts to give them ‘the talk,’ as the three lounge in their backyard pool setup which could not be more trailer trash in aesthetic if Kid Rock’s face were painted all over the lawn chairs. This lecture has the opposite of the intended affect, and leaves the youths more ingratiated in their personal delusions than ever before.

Related: 12 Worst Movie Parents of All Time, Ranked

Hippo Doesn’t Hold Anything Back

Hippo’s title is a tad misleading. While young Adam is definitely a primary character, he doesn’t follow any real narrative arc — at least not in the traditional sense. The burden of protagonist, as far as the film’s main story is concerned, falls on his sister. Buttercup is the one with the clear quest: she wants a child. She’d prefer it be with her brother (remember, she’s keenly aware that they aren’t related by blood), but she’s not overly picky in that regard, and she’s willing to go to lengths those in a more developed household would likely consider abhorrent.

The film doesn’t hold back, in any conceivable way. A lot of it is deeply gross, and it goes places many filmmakers wouldn’t even consider. Sperm is a prominent macguffin and plot point, and incest and pedophilia are both focused on extensively.

It’s got plenty of scenes tailor-made to induce riotous laughter, though. One scene (spoiled by the trailer) has Hippo smash his TV out of anger at continuously dying in his game, only to then calmly call for his mother (“Mom, come quick, there’s been a terrible accident, it’s so terrible”) as he continues to remove pieces of glass from the screen. In fact, Hippo’s lack of awareness toward his own narcissistic absurdity and parental reliance probably provides the bulk of the film’s funnier moments, along with his mother’s endlessly endearing naïveté.

As the film progresses, viewers are likely to go from rooting for the characters finding some way out of the purgatory they find themselves in, to kind of just hoping that they’re never fully unleashed on the world at large. Director Mark H. Rapaport described Hippo as a personal therapy session during the short Q&A period following the film, and Hippo does make a small but direct effort to point out that those in the outside world surrounding the ’90s time capsule where the story takes place are likely no better off or better adjusted than its hapless protagonists. It’s not a film that offers much comfort, but if there is any at all to be found in its perverse narrative, that’s probably where it lies.

Produced by Kinematics in association with Rough House Pictures, Hippo premiered at the 2023 Fantasia International Film Fest on July 26th. Make sure to watch this space for more information on the film’s wide release.

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