‘Chimp Crazy’ Is a Stunning Look at ‘Monkey Love’
The four-part documentary series “Chimp Crazy,” premiering Sunday at 10 p.m. on HBO, features a lot of chimps, and boy, is it crazy. Sad and horrifying, too, and sometimes poignant and philosophical. “Monkey love,” we’re told, is a unique, radicalizing kind of love — deeper than that between two humans. “The bond is so much deeper,” says Tonia Haddix, one of the series’ central figures. “It’s just natural; it’s like your love for God.”
Can she get an amen? No, not really: Haddix, who describes herself as “the Dolly Parton of chimps,” is both an advocate and participant in the private chimpanzee market. She says she has a special, spectacular bond with Tonka, an adult chimp who has appeared in several films and whom she finds particularly docile and soulful. She repeatedly emphasizes that Tonka, among others, is more of a “humanzee” — as much a person as a chimp. In one scene, she and Tonka watch Instagram videos of other chimps, including his offspring.
“Chimp Crazy” and “Tiger King” share an executive producer and director in Eric Goode, and they also share an ecstatic, tabloid-ready voluptuousness. A woman breastfed a baby chimpanzee next to her human daughter. A man describes the chimp his mother was housing as “the Tom Brady of chimps,” because of his handsomeness.
Everyone in this documentary is suffering, and some of them are ridiculous. And some of them are chimps. “Chimp Crazy” is more multi-layered than “Tiger King,” in part because of its greater focus on the plight of animals. Woven into Haddix’s saga are stories of other people who thought they could raise chimps and live together in endless family bliss — until the chimps reached adolescence, at which point they attacked someone. These attacks are horrific and often fatal, though they rarely deter the chimp owners.
Haddix’s battle with the animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals forms much of the documentary’s action, and its stunning details and twists are never more than a sad memory away. “Crazy” is both compassionate and manipulative, with the filmmakers themselves duping some of their subjects into becoming major players in Haddix and Tonka’s story. (Also a player: actor Alan Cumming, who once co-starred with Tonka and eventually offers a $10,000 reward for information leading to the animal’s whereabouts.) There’s an endless “OMG” about everything here, the kind of show that turns outrage into outrage.
