- Network: HBO
- Series Premiere Date: Aug 18, 2024
Critic Reviews
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
“Crazy” is both compassionate and manipulative, and the filmmakers themselves deceive some of their subjects and become major players in Haddix and Tonka’s story. .... There’s an endless “OMG” feeling to everything here, the kind of show that puts the outrage in outrageousness.
-
“Chimp Crazy” is less fascinating for the story’s outcome than its insight into the types of people who are obsessed with chimps regardless of the dangers they pose.
-
The series is disturbing, both in terms of animal welfare and human behavior — Goode’s as well as Haddix’s. I found it difficult to watch at times, yet it pulls you through to the end, as the plot progresses from strange to stranger. It is, of course, designed to do just that.
-
Chimp Crazy is at once better and worse than Tiger King. I was only occasionally gripped while watching it, but I was left feeling only slightly dirty and not wholly unclean after the experience.
-
There is a bleakness to the twisted relationships on show, the unmet needs of both humans and animals that suffuses the whole in a way that the crassness of Joe Exotic and – you know – all the hitman-hiring stuff allowed Tiger King to avoid.
-
The end result felt deeply depressing, leaving the impression that Haddix and the rest of the chimpanzee fanciers featured need help, not exposure in a four-hour documentary series that shamelessly takes the moral high ground despite being built on shaky foundations.