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Crazy Love
Magnolia Pictures

Crazy Love reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 69 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
6.6 out of 10
based on 29 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 5 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for language including sexual references, and mature thematic elements

Starring Burt Pugach, and Linda Pugach

Dan Klores' Crazy Love tells the astonishing story of the obsessive roller-coaster relationship of Burt and Linda Pugach, which shocked the nation during the summer of 1959. (Magnolia Pictures)


GENRE(S): Documentary  
WRITTEN BY: Dan Klores  
DIRECTED BY: Dan Klores
Fisher Stevens (co-director)
 
RELEASE DATE: Theatrical: June 1, 2007 
RUNNING TIME: 92 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

Nominated, Grand Jury Prize (Documentary), 2007 Sundance Film Festival

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
TV Guide Ken Fox
Of the long list of couples who have loved neither wisely nor particularly well, few have such power to disturb as Burton Pugach and the love of his life, Linda Riss.
Read Full Review
100
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
The enthralling documentary Crazy Love is about how a high-flying lawyer's obsession with a young beauty blinded her, metaphorically and literally.
Read Full Review
91
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Dan Klores's astonishing film is about a subject so bizarre it could only work as a documentary – as a drama, it would be dismissed as being too far-fetched.
Read Full Review
91
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The tale itself is so spectacularly perverse, and the film stays so authentically close to the personalities involved, that you don't feel dirty -- you feel cleansed.
Read Full Review
88
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
For those who don't believe that truth trumps fiction for whacked-out depravity, mark this shockingly fierce and funny spellbinder as Exhibit A.
Read Full Review
88
Boston Globe Ty Burr
Crazy Love doesn't downplay the awfulness of what happened , but it also knows a good media circus when it sees one.
Read Full Review
80
Film Threat Mark Bell
All told, Crazy Love is a rarity in documentaries; it's fun.
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80
New York Magazine David Edelstein
It takes some time to realize we're in a maelstrom--going down down down into a saga of obsession, sadism, masochism, and codependency that was and remains one of the great, sick tabloid stories of all time.
Read Full Review
78
Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman
The movie's quirk isn't forced; it sincerely ponders the nature of love and of human need, opening with a quote by Jacques Lacan and ending with a shrug.
Read Full Review
75
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Love makes us do all kinds of crazy things, but in Crazy Love, crazy seems too mild a word.
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75
New York Post Lou Lumenick
The story is still so compelling - and the principals still so eager for attention - that the filmmaker's pedestrian treatment can't take away from the impact.
Read Full Review
70
The New Yorker David Denby
One may be horrified by these two, or laugh at them, but both horror and laughter give way to amazement at the human talent for survival.
Read Full Review
70
Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Formally, Klores film is a standard-issue documentary, combining period footage with talking-head interviews. But his talking heads are a hoot -- leathery, leisure-suited, foul-mouthed, larger-than-life characters, straight out of the Bronx by way of Palm Beach -- and their story is a Gothic yarn of obsession, crime and forgiveness.
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70
Variety Dennis Harvey
While the competent filmmaking package lacks much of its own personality, the sheer fascinating strangeness of the people documented could earn the picture a minor cult following a la "Grey Gardens."
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70
Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
At one point, Klores thought about making a feature film out of the material, but it's a good thing he decided against it. You could not make this stuff up.
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70
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Klores and Stevens don't have much to work with visually besides talking heads, old photos, news clippings, and stock footage, but with a narrative this insane, that's more than enough.
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63
USA Today Claudia Puig
Crazy Love is pulp non-fiction.
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63
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Pugach's selfishness, his inability to detach love from gratification, is the key to this crazy story.
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63
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
In Crazy Love, friends of Burt and Linda express as much confusion over their relationship as we feel, and the Pugaches themselves make an unconvincing case for theirs being a love that conquered all. On the contrary, love doesn't seem to have had anything to do with them. She married him out of desperation, and he pursued her out of a sense of entitlement.
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60
Village Voice Rob Nelson
However sick this tabloid star may be, Crazy Love is a celebrity doc by definition, with all its attendant trade-offs, and even the director admits that his access wasn't free.
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60
Slate Dana Stevens
Though the subject matter sounds depressing, Crazy Love has an infectious, even bouncy tone.
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58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Gianni Truzzi
Romance has little to do with the bizarre tale, part true crime and part lonely-hearts drama, of Burt Pugach and Linda Riss. While the now elderly pair may have found some happiness, that absence is heartbreaking.
Read Full Review
58
The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
There's plenty of black comedy in their twisted affair, but a more substantial documentary wouldn't leave you smiling.
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50
Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Now, they're together. You can't look at them, but you can't look away either. So it goes.
Read Full Review
50
LA Weekly Ella Taylor
In the sense that everyone is interesting once their lives are sufficiently unpacked, Burt and Linda's story is not boring -- but beyond its tabloid sensationalism, it's not especially significant either.
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50
Premiere Aaron Hillis
Directed with little flair, a one-sided perspective and a questionable sense of moral responsibility by Dan Klores (his negligent lack of an editorial voice in the couple's lunacy reeks of train-wreck exploitation), Crazy Love is a disturbingly captivating tabloid horror, but that's not Klores' doing.
Read Full Review
50
The New York Times Manohla Dargis
The overall vibe is morbidly entertaining, though something of a downer, partly because it's unclear if Mr. and Mrs. Pugach know that they are such sick puppies, partly because it's unclear if Mr. Klores cares that they are.
Read Full Review
50
The Hollywood Reporter Sura Wood
Despite the inherent, shocking nature of the material, Dan Klores' narrowly focused, poorly paced documentary lacks a narrative thrust that could have made for a more compelling film.
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50
San Francisco Chronicle Tamara Straus
It leaves one feeling queasy about human nature.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 6.6 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

mathew B. gave it a7:
Great story, interesting interviews. Sort of a boring doc. style, and a few unanswered questions, hurt an otherwise great untold story. worth watching.

Andrew K. gave it a6:
I'm really surprised at how much the reviewers trash the director of this film. A true documentarian doesn't stamp his views all over the film. He lets the audience decide for themselves. What to say about Burt and Linda? Not knowing anything at all about them, and having read the brief reviews on here, I assumed that maybe they were in the mafia. Not so. Burt is a sleazebag lawyer and Linda is an ordinary, beautiful young girl when the story begins. Things turn ugly fast. What he does to her is terrible. And then comes the real surprise. I won't say what it is because I don't want to ruin it for anybody. But if you've never heard of these two, I advise you be introduced to them the same way I was. With this documentary. You won't believe that it's true. You may find them both to be, literally, crazy, as the title suggests. But in the end, who are we to judge? They seem to be happy. Or at least not miserable.

Jim G. gave it a6:
Wow. Truth really is stranger than fiction. Engaging tale, crisply told.

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