A lot can be said about how different family entertainment was back in the 1970s, as some of it could step into bizarre territory unlike most movies nowadays. In the case of the Hungarian-American fantasy adventure musical Hugo the Hippo, although largely forgotten about since its release in 1975, it has garnered an interesting cult following amongst the home video community. Made with the talents of the Osmond kids, Burl Ives and the now defunct Hungarian animation studio Pannanoia, this film might be one of the strangest oddities even for its time, which is truly saying something.
Set primarily in Tanzania, the film tells the story of a young hippopotamus named Hugo, whose entire family is kidnapped by the Sultan of Zanzibar to prevent shark attacks. After the hippos are no longer relevant to the city, they begin to starve and rampage for food. This prompts Aban-Khan, the king's adviser, to execute all the hippos, but Hugo escapes and befriends local children in the town of Dar es Salaam. Admittedly a very disturbing premise for a family movie, and perhaps that might be the biggest turning point of the feature. In addition to its tone flip flopping from light hearted to shockingly morbid, Hugo the Hippo suffers from a nearly disjointed narrative that feels it needs to come up with all sorts of crazy scenarios just to get its vague environmental message across. While the film does keep its insistence on the consequences of neglecting wild animals all throughout, it tends to get side tracked by trippy visuals and an over abundance of musical numbers that tend to slow the pace down. And yet, strangely enough, those sidetracks are what make the film work in its own weird way.
Thanks to the loose flow across the feature's runtime, numerous sequences will fluctuate in a very playful and relaxing manner. Sometimes they contrast poorly with the more slow and realistic moments between Aban-Khan, the adults and children, which does make them stick out like a sore thumb. However, when the film allows for the right amount of levity to take place, it becomes surprisingly heartwarming. Some of the better examples include Hugo befriending a little Tanzanian boy named Jorma and his fellow schoolmates, showing how much children understand the emotional appeal of animals better than adults. The voices of the children sound fairly authentic to how much passion can come from within someone so young and innocent defending an otherwise wild animal. The adults on the other hand range from two dimensionally evil to arrogantly simple minded to full on stereotypes that would not be accepted today. Had it not been for the vocal talents of Paul Lynde, Robert Morley and Len Maxwell, the adult roles would have fared even worse than the kids.
Adding in to the peculiar psychedelic nature of the film, Graham Percy's production design is quite a sight to behold. Although the colors are fairly muted, there is a large variety of every notable hue throughout the palette spectrum, especially in portraying the detailed jungles and cities. The character designs can often look so humanesque that they don't suit well for caricature, but the character animators did the most with specific poses and expressions. Most notable of a highlight are the musical numbers that look and feel like you're in a bizarre dream of colorful hodgepodges and stylistic technical tricks. Speaking of the musical numbers, mostly all performed by Burl Ives, Marie and Jimmy Osmond, some are in lieu of the story while others are merely there to pad out the running time. No matter which one plays, a lot of them fit well enough as their own entities to be an independent record away from the movie itself. Maybe the film would have caught on if the soundtrack was further pushed in the marketing, but one will never know unless they gave it a proper listen.
To put it in the nicest way possible, Hugo the Hippo is one of the strangest features of both its era and especially nowadays. While its story goes all over the place and the animation and songs instigate its sporadic nature, it does at least have its heart in the right place in conveying a message about protecting wild animals from the eyes of children. Unless you've already grown up on this in some capacity, I'd say give this at least one watch out of morbid curiosity, since there really isn't anything else like it out there. For a movie about a baby hippo befriending human children, it's surprisingly complex.
