{"id":25073,"date":"2019-06-10T08:53:16","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T13:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=25073"},"modified":"2019-06-10T08:53:16","modified_gmt":"2019-06-10T13:53:16","slug":"belated-movie-reviews-467","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2019\/06\/10\/belated-movie-reviews-467\/","title":{"rendered":"Belated Movie Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An angel and a fallen angel?<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

The Hippopotamus<\/a>\u00a0<\/b><\/i>(2017) is one of those cranky examples of British humor that can often leave an audience wondering if there’s a point to the hijinks. Ted Wallace is a poet, a poet with a big name, a string of failed marriages, destroyed friendships, a taste for alcohol arguably stronger than his taste for breathing, a job as a theatre reviewer of definite opinion, and a case of writer’s block so powerful he hasn’t published anything in a decade. He’s a cranky old shit.<\/p>\n

His job evaporates, and as he celebrates, his goddaughter shows up. She has been diagnosed with leukemia, but claims she’s been miraculously cured – and she hires her godfather to find out how. Is her family home the base for creating miracles?<\/p>\n

There’s history here, and not so good of history, but Ted has a positive connection with his godson, David, and he leans on that to cadge a visit. David is a trifle, well, odd. He spends evenings outside, he often disappears, and his family has witnessed him saving people and animals that are near death. Add to that a preoccupation with poetry, but poetry Ted disapproves of, and he’s a bit of a package that you’re not certain you’d sign for.<\/p>\n

Ted continues to investigate, digging beneath the surface of a pond opaque to casual investigation. Between old, detested acquaintances, desperate for a miracle, and family members who hesitate to throw either water or oil on the fire, the truth is occulted, but Ted has found a purpose, a drive that drags him, kicking and screaming, out of his private pond of whiskey, and on a quest for truth.<\/p>\n

Even as a poet might see it.<\/p>\n

But there’s a price to be paid for truth, and it’s enforced through a ruthless Nature – at least in the eyes of his ex-wife. If only he’d kept his mouth shut, she seems to be saying, everything would have been fine. Maybe it was just as well they divorced.<\/p>\n

The characters are well drawn, and it’s all a trifle sly and fun. Still, the title is a bit of a puzzle, and without having read the novel, I can only guess that a hippopotamus goes where it will, with little consideration for manners, and that’s Ted in a single line. But is there a theme that draws this all together.<\/p>\n

Truth to be told …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Hippopotamus\u00a0(2017) is one of those cranky examples of British humor that can often leave an audience wondering if there’s a point to the hijinks. Ted Wallace is a poet, a poet with a big name, a string of failed marriages, destroyed friendships, a taste for alcohol arguably stronger than \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25073"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25076,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25073\/revisions\/25076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}