I'm for the Hippopotamus (1979) poster
1979 · action · adventure · comedy

I'm for the Hippopotamus

Directed by Italo Zingarelli1h 35m1979
  • warm
  • kinetic
  • intense
  • tender
  • epic-stakes

In 1950, in Africa. Tom organizes safaris for tourists, secretly equipping them with guns loaded with blanks. When Slim, Tom’s cousin—a sly slacker and staunch environmentalist—arrives, the two men come into conflict with Jack Ormond, a local animal trafficker. A doctor, a friend of the duo, denounces Mr. Ormond’s exploitation of animals in a newspaper, prompting Ormond to send his henchmen to destroy the clinic where the good doctor practices. But at the medical facility, Ormond’s henchmen find Tom and Slim waiting for them, and in the blink of an eye, the two cousins wipe out these thugs in a brawl. Ormond then tries to bribe the two cousins, and when that fails, has them imprisoned for a theft they never committed. After escaping from prison, the two men rush toward Ormond’s ship, beating the merchant’s men to a pulp...

Our read · I'm for the Hippopotamus (1979) reads as a warm, breathless, grounded action · adventure · comedy entry — measured in intensity, epic-stakes in scope, tender in temperature, redemptive in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of I'm for the Hippopotamus

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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Geometric closeness in the twelve-axis space — pure DNA distance, not “people also liked.” Distance numbers are listed under each title for sceners who like to know the maths.

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