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100Of 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.
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100The enthralling documentary Crazy Love is about how a high-flying lawyer's obsession with a young beauty blinded her, metaphorically and literally.
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91The 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.
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91Dan 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.
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88For those who don't believe that truth trumps fiction for whacked-out depravity, mark this shockingly fierce and funny spellbinder as Exhibit A.
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88Crazy Love doesn't downplay the awfulness of what happened , but it also knows a good media circus when it sees one.
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80All told, Crazy Love is a rarity in documentaries; it's fun.
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80It 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.
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78The 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.
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75Love makes us do all kinds of crazy things, but in Crazy Love, crazy seems too mild a word.
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75The 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.
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70Formally, 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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70At 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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70While 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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70One 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.
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70Klores 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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63Pugach's selfishness, his inability to detach love from gratification, is the key to this crazy story.
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63In 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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63Crazy Love is pulp non-fiction.
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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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60Though the subject matter sounds depressing, Crazy Love has an infectious, even bouncy tone.
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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.
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58There's plenty of black comedy in their twisted affair, but a more substantial documentary wouldn't leave you smiling.
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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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It leaves one feeling queasy about human nature.
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50Directed 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.
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50In 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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50The 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.
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50Now, they're together. You can't look at them, but you can't look away either. So it goes.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 3 out of 3
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Mixed: 0 out of 3
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Negative: 0 out of 3
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mathewB.7
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AndrewK.6
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JimG.6Wow. Truth really is stranger than fiction. Engaging tale, crisply told.