well geez that's a bit limiting. granted i dont really see continental philosophy at face value, but at least there are insightful observations and such made in it. analytical philosophy's original project, teh destruction of nonpositivist discourse, has failed, so there is no reason to limit yourself to that. the human problems that affect real lives and the direction of civilisation are still very much debated, and a large portion of that debate is being carried out in continental circles. at least for this practical reason, it is useful to at least try to understand what they are on about.

further, in some areas, such as a social theory, the problems are complex not only horizontally but vertically as one paradigm may fail to accurately translate or reconstruct insights from others. specifically, the empirical methods, although foundationally sound, cannot operate wtihout a normative theory or a theory of ideology. (people dont just 'go mad,' they say and think and whatnot, and your empirical theory should be able to work with this) since the projects of comprehensive, total analysis encounter difficulties that reveal inadequacies in their language or theoretical framework, (behavioralism is a fine example of this), the investigation requires fine attention to detail in order to avoid glossing over real problems.

to be honest, i think the angle from which continental philosophy (namely the postmodern) address things is in itself assuming many things (difficulty is, they dont readily try to examine such) and sometimes is amateurish and impatient, but this is not the only direction continental philosphy could go.

i dont know what critical theory you've read, but the thing has a foundation and cannot be taken at face value. for instance, you need to know what hagel was on about. it at least makes sense enough to influence productive and exciting developments in a host of fields.