Capturing the Friedmans
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: May 30, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
90
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
38
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleEdward Guthmann
A superb documentary. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMark Caro
The more you learn, the more questions you have about life in that Great Neck house. Leo Tolstoy wrote that "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own fashion," but not even he could have invented the Friedmans. Read full review
100
The New YorkerDavid Denby
To begin your career with a masterpiece is so remarkable a feat that one can only hope Jarecki finds another subject as rich as this family, which was obsessed with itself but needed a filmmaker to begin to see itself at all. [2 June 2003, p. 102]
100
Boston GlobeTy Burr
As the Friedmans split apart like fissile neutrons, their story becomes five stories, none of which is remotely like the others. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
An extraordinary film; it may be the most haunting documentary since ''Crumb.'' Read full review
100
EmpireAdam Smith
Jarecki's film brilliantly illustrates the fallibility of memory, the slippery nature of 'facts' and even people's invention of events that may never have taken place. Read full review
100
USA TodayMike Clark
Not since "Memento" has a movie served up such a provocative mind-bender, and the Sundance winner by first-time filmmaker Andrew Jarecki has the advantage of being true. Read full review
100
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
A spellbinder of the rarest kind and quality. It opens audiences up to an infinite variety of emotional and intellectual nuances. Read full review
100
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
By the end of the movie, it’s no longer possible to know anything with certainty -– so convoluted, contradictory, pathological, and long ago have the events become. It’s a movie that will have you talking and thinking for hours. Read full review
100
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
What's most devastating in Capturing the Friedmans is how Jarecki puts the sureness of justice into doubt as he shows Truth (with a capital T) at the mercy of perspective and perception, context and emotion. Read full review
100
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
A compulsively watchable movie that's also a provocative inquiry into the ability of the criminal-justice system to determine culpability and truth. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
This remarkable, continually surprising documentary turns out to be something far richer and more complex, closer in spirit to "Crumb," another devastating film about a family's gradual self-destruction. Read full review
100
Washington PostDesson Thomson
A jarring, mesmerizing documentary. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Jarecki has created a tour de force of narrative ambiguity, and in doing so has made one of the most honest reality shows ever. Read full review
90
VarietyScott Foundas
There's a kind of rawness on the screen that most movies never approach. Read full review
90
SlateDavid Edelstein
Riveting and so suggestive that you can't consume it passively: You have to brood on it. Read full review
90
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Above all else, though, Capturing the Friedmans is a vividly personal, devastating story of a family that was hopelessly compromised years before it was scapegoated for crimes that two of its members may or may not have committed. Read full review
90
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Powerful and haunting. Read full review
90
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
First-time director Jarecki, better known as the co-founder of MovieFone, skillfully integrates the home-movie footage with his own thorough inquiry, weaving past and present into a patient, deeply engrossing piece of storytelling that's rich in ambiguities. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
In the entertainment culture that surrounds us, words like "harrowing," "anguishing," "unfathomable" or "horrifying" don't sell movie tickets. Capturing the Friedmans is all of these things and more.
90
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Utterly compelling account of a true-life criminal investigation where "truth" can never be pinned down. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Mr. Jarecki finds a way to show that denial and hope often grow from the same vine. Lives are built around the way they're harvested -- and this talented director has a feel for the soil. Read full review
90
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
I've seen only a few films in my lifetime that so potently express the golden hopes of childhood and parenthood, as well as the inevitable decimation of that hopefulness -- that forward-looking bliss -- at the hands of catastrophe, or merely age, spite, and exhaustion. Or, as for the Friedmans, all of the above. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Isn't like the classic Japanese drama "Rashomon," which suggested that one person's perspective of an event gave him a different truth from the person standing elsewhere. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The film is as powerful as any narrative motion picture in telling a story that rips at the emotions. Read full review
88
PremiereHoward Karren
Jarecki does a remarkable job with this easily exploitable material. Read full review
88
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
This extraordinary film refracts truth through the prism of memory, until what you get is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, full of sacrifice and betrayal. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
By the end of Capturing the Friedmans, we have more information, from both inside and outside the family, than we dreamed would be possible. We have many people telling us exactly what happened. And we have no idea of the truth. None. Read full review
88
New York PostLou Lumenick
An unforgettable and complex portrait of a nuclear family in meltdown. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
It's a modern horror story that gets you where you live. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
More than just a good crime story about the guilt or innocence of Arnold and Jesse Friedman. It's also a fascinating portrait of a seemingly normal middle-class family crumbling before our eyes. Read full review
80
SalonCharles Taylor
Andrew Jarecki could have done more to lay out the marriage of sexual and religious and social hysteria that made cases like this possible. But he deserves credit for having the guts to say, in this case and in so many like it, who suffered the most. Read full review
80
Dallas ObserverRobert Wilonsky
Capturing the Friedmans does not end after its credits roll; audiences will try the case over and over again in their heads. Jarecki does not judge, but leaves only tragic clues for us to ponder. Read full review
80
NewsweekDavid Ansen
It’s like a nightmare that follows you around in daylight: you can’t quite decode it, you can’t shake it, you can’t stop turning it over and over in your mind. This is one queasily powerful movie. Read full review
80
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
A prime candidate for a time capsule, to disclose a century hence the current state of some of our civilization's discontents, including the ability to be convinced that one is telling the truth even when one is lying. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Jennie Punter
In the midst of this emotional train wreck in motion, with angry outbursts and accusations, there are moments of levity, jokes and even a song or two. Strangely, it does not seem irreverent or bizarre but, rather, an expression of affection, as if love is tearing them apart. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Overmatched by the strange and compelling true story that is its subject, this unfortunate film ends up both more disingenuous than it wants to admit and more awkward than it can easily acknowledge. Read full review
70
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Never less than gripping. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
Jarecki shows off this footage as evidence of a truly dysfunctional family in various stages of denial. What it reveals at least as much is the modern phenomenon of reality-TV self-exposure carried to such lengths that, by comparison, the Osbournes look like the Cleavers. Read full review
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