The Hippopotamus: Fry Stephen

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On that note, I agree with another reviewer in here that Stephen Fry could read aloud an IKEA instruction manual and I would probably still be enthralled. His language often strikes me as so much verbal bravado, underlined by his English public school pronunciation in the audio version, yet he can get away with it; in fact, I suppose that is his style, really. And it’s not just words. There are hundreds of facts, opinions and questions, all idiosyncratically Fry-esque, squeezed into the dialogue that I almost had to push the stop button a few times simply to digest something before moving on (just as I had to stop it once in a while when I didn’t catch what he was saying because I had started laughing). The Hippopotamus review – eccentric adaptation of Stephen Fry's novel 1 June 2017 The Guardian www.theguardian.com, accessed 19 December 2020 Red herrings are liberally scattered through the book as the story develops. We learn a lot, but by the time we realise we are being led down a garden path, it is too late - the trap is sprung and we have to reorient our thinking in another direction. Well, it's Stephen Fry. How can it be anything but delightful? I was pleasantly surprised to find an intriguing examination of how children come to believe things about themselves. As well as being the bestselling author of three novels, Making History, The Hippopotamus, and The Liar, and the first volume of his autobiography, Moab is My Washpot, Fry has played Peter in Peter's Friends, Oscar Wilde in the film Wilde, Jeeves in the television series Jeeves and Wooster and (a closely guarded show-business secret, this) Laurie in the television series Fry and Laurie.

The Hippopotamus - Film - British Comedy Guide The Hippopotamus - Film - British Comedy Guide

A thought experiment to characterize the narrator of this book: What if somehow Oscar Wilde and Howard Stern had a son together? The United Kingdom's international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. I wasn't sure what to make of this to begin with, but I found it increasingly brilliant as I went along. Adrian also brings out our darker side. His semi-sociopathic ability - eagerness even - to lie, outright lie, when nothing is gained; this is something we can also relate to, whether we like it or not. Adrian - or perhaps Fry - exposes us as sad, pathetic people who feel, know, that they simply aren't as interesting as they'd like to be. His habitual lying revolves around himself and his experiences; he says what he wants people to know, and how he wants them to think of him. And we've all done the same. How many new-age college girls are spontaneously lesbian, vegetarian whale-lovers after their 18th birthday? Much more than actually /are/ lesbian, vegetarian, or whale-lovers for their lives, but it's something to /say/. It's a distraction from the fact that they, like so many others, are white, middle-class American girls who go home to the family they said was dead for Christmas and are at the college on a sports scholarship for lacrosse. Ho-hum. You wouldn't date a girl like that.

The work of the original author (Stephan Fry) shines through at times, but the script writer left muddy finger prints trying to keep the story moving and to fit studio norms & marketing expectations. The shift in writing style is jarring at times. It is only by the grace of Roger Allam's talented performance that the movie succeeds for 3 of the 8 stars I am giving it. Roger Allam is very good at playing a pompous intellectual who has become cynical and critical of all (see him in 'V" and other works). The sex stuff in this book is a bit over the top at times. Be forewarned. There's a lot of disgusting stuff in here that I could imagine some people finding totally disturbing. It did, however, made me laugh, and I think I learned a few new words from it. Not words I'd dare to use in any company though, simply because they would be darned hard to inject into a conversation, and because I would probably use them in the wrong context anyway. But still, it was quite nice to read a book with fancy words for a change. Or, uh, I mean, a book with fancy words that were there for a reason other than "look what I can do!" Adrian Healey is magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life; unprepared too for the afternoon in Salzburg when he will witness the savage murder of a Hungarian violinist; unprepared to learn about the Mendax device; unprepared for more murders and wholly unprepared for the truth. What it helped me while I was reading this novel, was that I knew to understand the Laurie's style of commenting controvertial topics that while Fry's way isn't done is such effective same form than Laurie's, it did help me to understand that in several moments, you don't have to take him so seriously and so by-the-letter, since many comments are sarcastic and purposely out of tone.

Hippopotamus Audiobook - Stephen Fry - Listening Books The Hippopotamus Audiobook - Stephen Fry - Listening Books

Perchance a three and a half rather than a four, slightly disappointing yet enjoyable, but I couldn't rightly give this just a middling three out of five.This has to be the funniest book that I have ever read. It is absolutely outrageously disgustingly funny. I kneel in the shadow of Fry's excellence. Tom Huddleston, Time Out, 22 May 2017 The Hippopotamus review – eccentric adaptation of Stephen Fry's novel Roger Allam elevates a wonky country house mystery with a wholeheartedly verbose performance

The Hippopotamus (film) - Wikipedia

The average American lexicon is insufficient to catch the full meaning of the various diatribes the protagonist goes on. He is impish and bitter about the mundane nature of survival.

Film Notes

Weird, but compelling, because the main character, poet Edward Lennox Wallace (Tedward), is a cantankerous, misogynistic, drunken snob who becomes the unlikely investigator of a country house mystery. I found the writing style easy to read and the story entertaining. It was funny in some places, poignant in others. I particularly enjoyed the histories of the characters and the relationships between them. First Athena List Film 'Little Pink House' to Open 2017 Edition of Female-Focused Festival (Exclusive) It's hard to work out what sort of book this is, to begin with. Is it a first person narrative? An epistolary novel? A self-indulgent bit of male wankery. Certainly the protagonist is a little off-putting in his aging drunken lechery. If you think that there is a discrepancy between giving a book 3 stars and placing it on the "disappointing" shelf, remember that the author is Stephen Fry, someone I think of as being awesomely smart and very funny. His intelligence is evident in this book, but much of the attempted humor falls flat. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that much of it is the kind of humor that might have flown a generation ago (think Kingsley Amis, Wilt Sharpe, Roald Dahl), but is completely jarring in 2010. What puzzles me is that it would have been equally jarring in 1994, when this book was published, and Fry is smart enough to know this, so it's obviously a conscious choice that he made. It's unclear why he did so, because it detracts quite a bit from the enjoyment of the book. It's a toss-up which was more offputting - the incessant vulgar misogynistic musings of the splenetic, Kingsley Amis wannabe narrator or the paragraphs of ridiculously mincing poofter-talk inflicted on the reader. There is really no excuse for this: