Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Chimp Crazy’ On HBO, A Docuseries About People Who Keep Chimpanzees As Pets, Highlighting One Who Fights To Keep Hers

Chimp Crazy is a four-part docuseries, directed by Eric Goode ( Tiger King ) about people who keep chimpanzees as their pets, despite the dangers posed by these wild primates, especially as they become large and powerful adults. Goode profiles a number of chimp owners, and goes back to past cases where chimps attacked and seriously hurt the people caring for them. But he concentrates the story around Tonia Haddix, who is the self-proclaimed “Dolly Parton of chimps.”

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Opening Shot: We pan across to see a bevy of chimp dolls and stuffies, then we see a baby chimpanzee, wearing a onesie and a diaper, hugging one of the stuffies.

The Gist: We see Tonia Haddix, hair teased up to the heavens, playing with the baby chimp in a very pink bedroom. The former nurse took over the care of seven chimps from Connie Casey, the owner of a former chimpanzee breeding facility in Festus, MO that is now redubbed the Missouri Primate Foundation; one of Casey’s businesses was called Chimparty, where she rented out chimps to go to kids’ parties. Casey also provided chimps for movie and television productions and photo shoots, and housed retired acting chimps. One older chimp, Tonka, made his way to MPT after an acting career that included starring in a film with Alan Cumming, whom Goode interviews for the series.

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Haddix, a nurse from St. Louis, started as a volunteer at MPT, but fell in love with the chimps she was caring for and ended up working there full-time. The chimps lived in pretty appalling conditions, with limited space, and the aging Casey was having problems keeping up with cage upkeep. When a volunteer for MPT reported the conditions to PETA and gave them video evidence, the organization sued Casey in 2017. Haddix came in shortly afterwards, and improved things, but she tells Goode that PETA was never satisfied with her improvements, which she claims cost her $500,000, a total PETA rep has a hard time believing.

PETA eventually got a court order to rehome the chimps under Haddix’s care, and Goode and his crew show the retrieval via hidden cameras. All but one chimp is accounted for — somehow, Tonka was missing.

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What Shows Will It Remind You Of? With Tiger King , Goode proved that he can find damn-near insane stories in the world of exotic animal owners, and he does the same in Chimp Story . There’s also a bit of Roar: The Most Dangerous Movie Ever Made in here, too; that docuseries was about the making of Roar , the 1981 adventure comedy starring Tippi Hedren and Melanie Griffith, in which numerous cast members and production personnel were injured by wild lions on set.

Our Take: Tiger King made us laugh, get angry and get incredibly sad all at the same time. Chimp Crazy also gives us this roller-coaster of emotions, but the anger and sadness seems to bubble up in us more with this story. Maybe it’s because chimpanzees are the most genetically similar to humans and display traits that we recognize in ourselves. It can also be because, while Joe Exotic saw the tigers in his care as simply a way to make money, Tonia Haddix has genuine affection for the chimps in her care, and considers them to be her children.

There are moments where Haddix is completely delusional, like where she thinks the improvements she made to the MPT would be enough to satisfy PETA, when what she did was throw on a coat of paint, feed the chimps fresher food, and clean their cages like she should have. She doesn’t realize that these adult chimps are going stir crazy in their small enclosures, even as the chimps bang against the bars and the floor while she’s being interviewed by Dwayne Cunningham, a former exotic-animal breeder who is serving as Goode’s proxy, which was needed to get access to Casey and Haddix.

We watched the first episode knowing that there have been incidents in the past where people who owned chimps were suddenly and violently attacked by them, and Haddix casually mentions that Casey’s husband had his nose bitten off by one of the chimps at Chimparty/MPT. It’s good that it’s acknowledged in the first episode, because seeing Haddix being playful with these adult chimps made us squinchy knowing what we know about what they’re capable of. We do know that at least one or two of those past cases will be examined in the series.

But what Goode is interested in is a sensational story, and what Haddix did with Tonka is exactly the kind of story he can make something dramatic out of. Haddix faked Tonka’s death to keep him with her after PETA rehomed the rest of the chimps, and that’s the story that Goode is going to dip in and out of as he talks to other chimp owners and trainers, as well as examine those old cases.

He certainly tells the story well, and manages to ingratiate himself with Haddix via the ingenious use of Cunningham as a proxy; his solution to get footage of PETA rehoming the chimps even though the judge in the case ordered cameras out of MPT during the retrieval period was a thing of beauty to watch.

But what we wonder is how much juice there is to squeeze from the strangeness of Haddix and the other chimp owners he interviews, and if we’re just going to be more angry and sad the longer the series goes.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: We see Haddix playing the slots at a local casino, and we hear her talking about how she’ll do anything to keep chimps in her life, which we would imagine includes keeping Tonka out of the clutches of PETA.

Sleeper Star: This pretty much went to Alan Cumming as soon as we saw him on screen. He formed a bond with Tonka when the two of them worked on the films George Of The Jungle and Buddy together, and you can hear his affection for his chimp co-star as he talks, as well as his disdain for people like Haddix.

Most Pilot-y Line: We see archival footage Casey’s husband manage a young chimp at a birthday party, and Goode just casually shows a sewn-on bump in his nose like it’s supposed to be there. We get why he does it, and as we mention above, Haddix explains that bump, but that bit of manipulation annoyed us a little bit.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Chimp Crazy is a docuseries that piles on the storytelling drama, but it also evokes strong emotions from us, which is what a good docuseries should do.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

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