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64
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63
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62
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60
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58
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58
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58
Quarantine
57
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57
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
57
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55
House Bunny, The
54
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53
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53
Lucky Ones, The
52
Longshots, The
51
Mamma Mia!
49
Family That Preys, The
47
Swing Vote
47
X-Files: I Want to Believe, The
46
Lakeview Terrace
45
Blindness
43
Meet Dave
43
Death Race
43
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41
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
39
Nights in Rodanthe
37
Miracle at St. Anna
36
Space Chimps
36
Righteous Kill
36
Fly Me to the Moon
35
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35
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
35
Mirrors
34
My Best Friend's Girl
27
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26
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24
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20
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15
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

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80
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78
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72
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Lower Learning
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Crazy Love
Magnolia Pictures
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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

80
Film Threat
Mark Bell
All told, Crazy Love is a rarity in documentaries; it's fun.

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.

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.

75
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Love makes us do all kinds of crazy things, but in Crazy Love, crazy seems too mild a word.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

63
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Crazy Love is pulp non-fiction.

63
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Pugach's selfishness, his inability to detach love from gratification, is the key to this crazy story.

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.

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.

60
Slate
Dana Stevens
Though the subject matter sounds depressing, Crazy Love has an infectious, even bouncy tone.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

50
San Francisco Chronicle
Tamara Straus
It leaves one feeling queasy about human nature.


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.
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