"In the case of Hugo The Hippo, however, the blame for its failure did not necessarily come from a lack of talent or ability in any field. Who knows, the people who made it may very well have come up with a passable movie had it not been for one thing that got in their way early in the game....
Drugs."
—Keith Bailey, The Unknown Movies - "Hugo The Hippo"
Hugo the Hippo (also known as Hugó, a víziló in Hungary) is a Hungarian animated film produced by Pannonia Film Studio and co-produced by Brut Productions, a division of the perfume company Faberge. It was the first animated feature distributed by 20th Century Fox in 1976.
In the country of Zanzibar its docks become overrun by sharks, making trade to and from the country impossible. The sultan charges his Evil Chancellor Aban-Khan to bring a dozen hippos from Africa to the harbor to scare off the sharks. It works too well as once the hippos stop being a novelty? The people refuse to care for them or feed them; leading to the hippos tearing Zanzibar apart looking for food. After Aban-Khan brutally slaughters the hippos one by one, our titular baby hippo Hugo escapes to the African city of Dar es Salaam, where a little boy named Jorma attempts to hide and take care of him.
However, the towns parents become none to pleased by their children becoming distracted taking care of this hippo and burn their garden, leaving Hugo to scavenge the town like his fellow hippos. When Aban-Khan hears news of this? Things get… very bizarre… with the help of the court Wizard he turns their garden into one of giant vegetables to trap Hugo, which then become gigantic monsters that want to kil Hugo and Jorma, who barely avoid the trap and end up on trial.
A Box Office Bomb in Hungary, after a brief run on VHS in the 1980s Warner Archive released the film on DVD on June 13, 2015.
Hugo the Hippo provides examples of:
- Absent-Minded Professor: Mr. M'Bowow, the children's teacher, who is shown being so absorbed reading his book that he neglects many of his home appliances and confuses which objects to use at home. He also gets a song number dedicated to this.
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: The King of Hippos, despite being non-anthropomorphic, wears a crown on his head. The sharks also wear hats. Hugo himself wears a rope noose during most of the movie.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Aban-Khan has light greenish-blue skin, in contrast to the other human characters who have realistic skin tones.
- Amoral Attorney: In an Ace Attorney-like twist, Aban-Khan serves as the sinister prosecutor in Hugo's trial.
- Angry, Angry Hippos: While the hippos are mostly portrayed as gentle and friendly, they are also shown defeating the sharks easily and destructive in their revenge against the humans.
- Badass Biker: No motorcycles, but the sharks have an outlaw biker aesthetic, with studded fins, helmets, goggles, sunglasses, military caps, and other such accoutrements to make them look even tougher.
- Bloodless Carnage: Aban-Khan personally shoots dead the hippos (apart from Hugo). This is portrayed as him zapping hippo-shaped clouds. The dead hippos are later shown, deep in the sea, but no blood is shown.
- It can be presumed that some of the dockworkers were eaten in the shark attack. The camera lingers on the biggest shark chewing on something we never see.
- Cartoonland Time: After getting rid of the sharks, Zanzibar is shown as developing into a thriving modern urban city... but Hugo himself is still a young baby, implying it happened in a very short time.
- Children Are Innocent: The children characters are depicted as the most sympathetic characters in the movie, their empathy to Hugo being shown as good and noble, compared to the greed and violence of the adults.
- Complexity Addiction: Aban-Khan has a wizard at his service with functional magic who, instead of directly dealing with the sharks, creates a giant robot horse and cowboy to catch the hippos. And later, a giant robot watering-can/bug-bird that makes fruit and vegetable grow giant, moving and humanoid, just to catch Hugo.
- Crying Critters: Hugo is shown crying tears after seeing his family dead. Underwater.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The hippos make short work of the sharks.
- Deranged Animation: This movie is a prime example of this. Especially during the part where giant mutant vegetables attack, creating almost a whole another space dimension made of fruits and veggies.
- Evil Chancellor: Aban-Khan is this to the Sultan. He abuses his subjects, and kills the hippos once they outlived their usefulness.
- The Face of the Sun: Appears twice (during the opening credits, and later near the end) to frown disapprovingly on the men marching Hugo to his trial. In a variation, the face looks feminine.
- Flying Carpet: The wizard sleeps in such a carpet, rolled around him, levitating.
- Green Aesop: Sultan Majid's final speech hints at this, as he asks the people to treat the animals with respect, after the hippos have been shown as being taken from their original environment, exploited, neglected and slaughtered.
- Green and Mean: Aban-Khan is the main villain and he has greenish blue skin.
- Hell-Bent for Leather: Would you believe... the sharks?
- How We Got Here: The opening credits sequence features a procession of men and a cart we never see quite clearly (either from a distance or in silhouette) from the POV of assorted animals. The men march along a dirt road through the open countryside towards a distant city on a seashore. Much later on, after Hugo is caught by the Aban Khan, we see the procession up close for the first time: they're soldiers taking Hugo (in a cage) to his trial in Dar Es Salaam.
- Huggy, Huggy Hippos: Hugo is a sweet and cute baby hippopotamus.
- I Was Named "My Name": Hugo is called so by the narration, is named "Hugo" by the people of Zanzibar as it means "here he is" in their language, and is called "Hugo" again at the city of Dar es Salaam.
- Kid Hero: Jerma is the closest thing to a human protagonist in this movie, and is a kind-hearted little boy who takes Hugo under his care.
- Large and in Charge: One of the sharks is bigger than the rest, swimming at the apex of a V-formation towards Zanzibar harbor.
- Match Cut: A dock worker tries to escape the sharks by jumping in a barrel, and the image cuts to a similarly-shaped ice cream slurpee that Aban-Khan is eating in his car.
- Pet Baby Wild Animal: Jerma decides to take care of Hugo, a young little hippopotamus.
- Plant People: The action climax of the film has Aban-Khan's wizard create humanoid vegetable/fruit people to capture Hugo.
- Produce Pelting: Hugo is a victim of this as he's being taken to his trial. Later on, the Aban Khan gets pelted when Hugo is acquitted.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The Sultan Majid at first looks like a lazy doofus, but he ultimately convinces the people of Dar es Salaam of the goodwill of the children and the hippos.
- Right-Hand Cat: The Sultan has a pet cheetah, but like its master, it's not terribly threatening.
- Scary Stinging Swarm: Hugo is attacked by a swarm of bees after a basketball-sized fruit drops into a basketball-net-shaped beehive.
- Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Hugo escapes a terrible fate thanks to the judge's decision, but Aban-Khan desperately tries to bribe the judge by offering him his turban that is adorned by a pricey jewel. The judge won't have any of it.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: A sea turtle appears just long enough to do this as the sharks are introduced.
- Secret Pet Plot: The children take care of Hugo in secret, and build a garden for him. Unfortunately, Mr. M'Bowow eventually discovers it and tells the parents.
- Silly Simian: Hugo meets apes having fun playing basketball with ball-sized fruits.
- Super-Scream: The King of Hippos starts defeating the sharks by unleashing a powerful destructive bellow wave at them, turning the battle in the hippos' favour.
- Tempting Fate: Despite all the evidence to the contrary—and the fact that the shark attack is still going on while he's standing there—the Aban Khan declares "THERE ARE NO SHARKS IN THE SULTAN'S HARBOR!" Cue a shark leaping from the water and tearing off the Aban Khan's robe.
- Threatening Shark: The sharks menace the harbor of Zanzibar, attacking the dock workers.
- Token White: The story is mostly set in Subsaharan Africa, but there are a few white European-looking characters among the inhabitants, including the children.
