Film Review: Chimp Crazy

5 Stars

By Joseph Beyer | Oct. 5, 2024

The new four-part HBO documentary miniseries Chimp Crazy not only lives up to its name, but goes far beyond it in revealing an underworld with more twists and turns than even the veteran filmmaker Eric Goode thought possible. The result is an addictive story filled with disturbing questions about our human relationship with the animal world, revelations about the private captivity of wild and exotic animals around us, and what (if anything) we as a society should do about it.

The arc is big, and for the purposes of a great series, it helps that the heroine-slash-villain of Chimp Crazy is a flamboyant and extraordinary onscreen presence. Tonia Haddix, with hair and nails Dolly Parton would admire and who is often dressed from head to toe in pink, is a self-declared primate lover so obsessed with her animals that she admits freely she cares more about them than her own family. A large part of the series is digging deep into her psyche to find out why.

When the documentary opens, Haddix’s entire life has become engulfed in the acquisition, care, and big business of the exotic animal underground—a subculture largely unregulated in the United States. This has allowed the proliferation of a truly stunning array of primates in captivity and an emerging whirlwind of dangers that come not only to the caretakers but society at large.

What filmmaker Goode and his team investigate and exploit is, in a word, bonkers. It’s exactly what you might expect from the creator of Tiger King, Goode’s hugely viral portrait of a similarly obsessed animal lover. In Chimp Crazy, however, the stakes get even higher as the filmmakers become embroiled in Haddix’s fight against the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

PETA has come for her chimps, and Haddix will do anything she can to stop them. At the heart of this battle is custody of Tonka, her 32 year-old chimp that she considers her “humanzee” son.

Presenting a range of perspectives from passionate animal rights activists to the many quirky industry entrepreneurs, each character’s story is woven intricately together. This helps illustrate the many deeply felt motivations at play, from the desire for companionship to the pursuit of knowledge and conservation of species.

You’ll see the contagious playfulness and affection of these pets, but later come the darker realities: the complexities of their primate social structures, aggressive outbursts and violence, and the obvious ethical dilemmas of captivity.

One of the doc’s many strengths is its ability to balance the compelling personal stories with the critical implications of keeping exotics as pets or attractions. On the flip side, one of the doc’s main weaknesses is the absence of objectivity, as the filmmakers work with PETA to, some might say, assist in entrapping the unknowing Haddix. Director Goode even employs an actor to portray himself, gaining Haddix’s trust as the proxy reports back to Goode at the production studio.

Goode seems keenly aware that showcasing the often chaotic and unpredictable nature of living with such intelligent creatures is shocking content. But he also takes the story deeper by following the many existential questions that arise as a result.

Highly bingeable and edited to keep you intentionally on the edge of your seat, Chimp Crazy is a wild adventure indeed. It seems to have been created more than it was captured in real time, and thus should be seen as a new hybrid of reality and fiction—one that will leave fans of the horror film Nope as satisfied as those of the doc classic Grey Gardens.