Meet the 'Tiger King' Successor, 'Chimp Crazy'

By Alison Lanier | TV | August 23, 2024 |

By Alison Lanier | TV | August 23, 2024 |

As director Eric Goode says, when he made Tiger King, he introduced the viewing public to the world of American exotic animal owners, and the view wasn’t pretty. Now he’s back, with fresh subject matter and a documentary subject who strains the boundaries of belief, then strides right on past them.

Chimp Crazy explores the wild world of women who essentially treat pet chimpanzees as their children; more narrowly, the show focuses on the battle around Connie Casey’s Festus, Missouri chimpanzee breeding operation. Connie’s supporters credit her with breeding about 75% of the chimpanzees living in captivity within the US today. Her non-supporters call it, more bluntly, a puppy mill for chimps. She rented out baby chimps to everything from children’s parties to Hallmark cards to blockbuster movies.

Those blockbuster movies are, ironically, part of what brought her operation down.

Actor Alan Cumming formed a close bond with Tonka, one of Connie’s young chimps, while filming the movie Buddy in the ’90s. When Cumming saw a photograph of Tonka in inhumane conditions at Connie’s Missouri stronghold, he was propelled into action to get Tonka out of there. His partners in the endeavor: PETA, the purposefully controversial animal rights group that thrives on making a stir with infamously extreme protest tactics.

Connie is camera-shy now, reluctant to be part of the public narrative anymore. Now, the star of the show— in this case, literally— is Tonia Haddix, an over-the-top personality who models herself after Dolly Parton and scoffs at words like “professional.” She comes into Connie’s operation, partly in response to PETA’s lawsuit, to make the chimps’ conditions acceptable to PETA’s demands, and becomes what can only be described as obsessed.

Beyond the strangeness and absurdity of it all, Tonia’s earnest devotion to these animals is almost painful. Unlike Joe Exotic, her predecessor in the exotic-animal-documentary spotlight, Tonia doesn’t see the chimps as status symbols or money-making tools. They’re creatures that she deeply loves, which makes it all the more tragic as we begin to understand that she doesn’t actually understand how to care for them.

It’s an emotional journey with pity at the root of it. Even if you put your whole soul into something you believe in, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it well or you’re doing it right. Watching Cumming get emotional over the treatment of his former costar drives home the fact: good intentions do not guarantee good deeds. Layered on top of the questions of humane treatment is the question of genuine danger. In the first episode, we learn how Connie’s husband had his nose bitten off by one of the chimps in his (dubious) care. There are numerous other horror stories of chimp ownership gone violently wrong in a quick Google search.

The documentary isn’t as kind as it could be to Tonia, but it doesn’t feel actively unkind either. She’s an absurd, wholehearted character whose choices are highly questionable, as the docuseries’s narrative balances between her and Alan/PETA’s perspective. Tonia views PETA as evil, mastermind, corporate goons who don’t actually care about the animals, while Alan/PETA try to forge a legal path to safety for the animals in a more humane setting.

There is one genuinely unsettling aspect of the docuseries on the filmmakers’ part. Actual director Goode is well aware no one in the exotic animal community will come anywhere near him after the Tiger King fiasco/pop-culture phenomenon. So he sends in a stand-in as a “proxy” director. Dwayne Cunningham is an ex-circus performer and animal breeder who’s had his own run-ins with law enforcement (including jail time) over questions of animal welfare. With that endearing résumé, Cunningham is able to get access to be the man-on-the-ground for Goode’s docuseries. But with every other horrible choice made in this tale, Goode’s ranks as iffy at worst.

Come to Chimp Crazy for the absurdity and chaos, and stay for the absurdity, chaos, and surprising pathos of this, at times, literal circus. The first of the four-part series makes clear that the storytelling here will be both well-done and sensational.

New episodes stream on Max every Sunday night.