I am not a crossfitter, but I have dabbled in following the WOD from time to time.

I'm curious to know if the critique in the OP is coming from actually trying it for awhile, maybe even joining/attending a crossfit gym, or just looking at the website?

and I haven't seen any real criticism here other than "I don't like it". Yes, some of the exercises require very good form, and in turn often require that you be in pretty good shape to start with. A good Crossfit gym will work with you on this and give you coaching on form and alternates if you're not up to the full bore WOD just yet.

Crossfit, and those types of workouts, make more sense to me than any of the traditional strength/cardio alternating, LA Fitness, type programs. Something else to remember about Crossfit is that if you really follow their program and recomendations you're also participating in some kind of other physical activity. Soccer, football, cycling, whatever. They typically don't advocate for simply showing up to the CF gym for 30 minutes a day on your way home from work. But even if that's all you do, I suspect you're going to get better results, be in better shape, and have a better range of real-world strength than if you spent the same 30 minutes a day at LA Fitness.

Crossfit isn't for everyone, especially those that can't get past what they've been taught. Finding a good gym, with good trainers, seems critical to me to ensure that you don't get hurt, but the people that like it seem to really, really like it. I'm sure that to an extent part of that is the belonging to a subculture thing, but if that gets some fatbody off the sofa and doesn't get him hurt, this is a bad thing how?