Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
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...
I'm for the Hippopotamus is a lightweight Italian comedy-adventure vehicle for Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, set in Africa with an eco-conscious backdrop. The plot is formulaic even by the duo's own standards — crooked villain, brawling heroes, broad slapstick — with little narrative complexity. Acting is serviceable but purely functional; Spencer and Hill coast on their established chemistry rather than stretching. The African location photography provides some visual interest and decent scope for its era, earning a slight bump in cinematography. Novelty is low — this is a by-the-numbers entry in a long-running formula the pair had already perfected elsewhere, and the environmentalist angle is too superficial to distinguish it meaningfully. The ending resolves predictably with the requisite brawl and comeuppance, offering no surprises.