Littered with almost non-stop praise from movie critics around the world, and being rewarded with an Oscar nomination, "Capturing the Friedman's" is a daunting and sometimes utterly shocking documentary that will keep you interested all the way through. They were basically the average family; the Friedman's were your picture perfect Jewish family as seen through a home video montage in the opener taken by the family, father and patriarch Arnold Friedman was a decorated award-winning computer teacher, matriarch Elaine Friedman is the pretty mom who seems very content while their three strapping sons fool around on tape, but there really is no such thing as a perfect family.

"Capturing the Friedman's" is a chronicle of the case and crime of Arnold Friedman who In 1984, was foiled in a police sting for subscribing to child pornography, but with a run of the mill case of pedophilia is revealed to be a much bigger case, and evolves into a tragedy as Arnold and his son David was discovered and accused to have molested, sexually abused, and raped countless young boys performing acts of violence and rape.

"Capturing the Friedman's" chronicles the family's struggle through the case and their revelation at their decorated respected father and through their abuse cases, a sometimes shocking range of sequences explaining Arnold and his sons methods towards raping countless young boys. The opening sequence is very dream-like almost too perfect as we watch a home video of the Friedman family partying and we manage to watch the three young sons who seem bonded almost as a brotherhood, which is used later on in the documentary to get their way.

Many times the bond between the brothers is almost morbid with times of closeness and friendship that border on odd, a scene especially odd is when the brother David is about to be sentenced, the day of his sentencing his brother is filming him preparing to hear how he'll be jailed for life and he always seems to have a sort of self-satisfactory grin, and at one point the brothers joke outside the courthouse, a sight so confusing and creepy, it makes you question their innocence. The men in the family are very closely brought together to a fault engaging in secret meetings, gang up on the mother to the point of hatred arguing with her and often taking the side of the father never questioning him and always defending him. We're never sure what we're watching during the film but we are sure we're watching the fabric of a family fall to pieces, and the blanket of safety and convenience fall from a family revealing really a lot of dysfunction and much isolation between them.

Much of the material in the documentary is shocking including the accounts from the victims, many of the testimonies and so much more, and while you mourn the crimes, you also wonder if there could have been anything done to prevent this. Perhaps not.

I wasn't sure where I stood with this film to the point that it really frustrated me. Every bit of evidence is broken down and then scattered among the film rather than being broken down and split into chapters like an average documentary. We're never given enough evidence to make our own conclusions but instead are given brief stints into other content so irrelevant to the actual purpose of the doc, that we're drawn away from the material instead of staying focused. We learn about the father Arnold's young sister who died before she was old enough to talk, but there's really no relevance of her death to the material that would prove her death had any impact whatsoever other than emotional.

Her period of the documentary is right in the middle when we're in the case of the father and his upcoming conviction as a rapist, but we're never told what relevance it has in the film, then we're shown one of the sons who ended up turning into a party clown, which is a bit odd considering his father is a convicted child rapist, and we're shown bits of his profession which have no bearing in the documentary and then in the end we're shown the mom's reunion with her jailed son Jesse (who was convicted with the father) in the end, but we're never sure how we're supposed to react to their heartfelt meeting because we're never convinced if her son is guilty or not, so should we be happy for a man who was innocent or mad because a child rapist was given a little happiness? We're never sure.

Then we're given contradiction after contradiction throughout the film amidst case points that pull us in all directions including testimonies from "victims" that seem so outlandish including the supposed forced rape in the back room in which the lawyers make a good point of disproving stating that he found it hard to believe considering parents would occasionally pop into the class room to check on the progress so it baffles the viewer into how any of this activity might have happened in the first place. The case and its elements and evidence alone is always questionable and sometimes so far-fetched considering the sexual games the father would supposedly show his students, but it's never told if he has any skill in making games in the first place, and what happened to the copies of the computer games?

He couldn't have burned them considering he was arrested by surprise. Then the students that make the testimonies seem a little effeminate to the point where you wonder if many of the activities were consensual and staged with their permission, and you wonder if they're telling everything that had happened. No one ever really admits to anything nor do they deny anything in particular which leads us to believe we're getting relatively nowhere. Then the ending is confusing because it's said that Arnold had an affair with his brother, which the brother denies but then the documentary reveals he's living with his boyfriend on the beach somewhere which prompts us to just scratch our heads at the blatant proof that he may have been affected by his brother and maybe they did have an affair after all, the proof is in the pudding.

Simply, everything in the film is so chaotic it never settles down from what it's supposed to be focusing on and that's the allegations of rape and child molestation towards Arnold Friedman that tears apart their family, which isn't as focused on as would have been preferred in the first place, so it all feels so unresolved and baffling to the point where we realize we've pretty much just wasted our time.

While gripping and well made with messages about the chaotic and frenzied crime of molestation, it pulls you in so many directions with many interviews contradicting the other and far-fetched accusations, you're never sure who is innocent, or if anything even happened, so in the end, you're left with much confusion.