Goya's Ghosts: Critic Reviews

Goya's Ghosts is such a botch, it left me yearning for a little digital bombast.

Goya's Ghosts, the new feature from the director Milos Forman, is an unwieldy mix of political satire and lavish period soap opera.

The idea and presence of Goya himself is somehow off-centre and off-balance throughout this directionless movie.

Handsome but stilted.

An overstuffed turkey that's entertaining for all the wrong reasons. It may in fact be the comedy of the summer, a melodramatic folly whose ambitions consistently curdle into camp.

Distinctly Goya in its emphasis on the grotesque, it shows none of the Spaniard's artistic economy.

Fascinating ideas do hover, like mournful specters, around the edges of this meticulously detailed movie. But then they disappear, leaving us vaguely sad and unsettled, with nothing solid to grasp.

A punishing misfire.

An extraordinarily beautiful film that plays almost like an excuse to generate its images.

One of [Forman's] more fanciful [biopics], spinning a historical melodrama around the great Spanish painter Francisco Goya.

Not a perfect film, but its implications have profound resonance.

The film's greatest moments of artistry are in the credits, which feature a breathtaking gallery of the painter's work.

Misery, misery, misery.

It's a richly seen and felt movie, but not one with a feel-good message.

Ambitious script is stranded between entertainment and intellectualism, leaving us with a magnificent folly, thoroughly watchable for its visuals but ultimately hollow.

An across-the-board disaster from one of my favorite directors, Milos Forman.

Think of it as an Amadeus that doesn't work.

Goya's Ghosts...has no clear purpose, no clear message and no clear central character. Like most costume dramas these days, it dwells on the gore, filth and violence of the past -- but toward what end is never apparent.

The movie is uneven in the extreme, to the extent that it feels like two imperfectly wed pictures. The first, while not extraordinary, at least contains some interesting ideas. The second borders on embarrassing.

A modern sensibility afflicts much of the screenplay, with characters expressing thoughts and opinions for our ears rather than acting as people of that era.

It has grand scale and grand ambitions, and in the midst of our annual silly season at the movies I would like to suggest that, flawed as it is, the film does reward our serious attention.

Goya's Ghosts is Milos Forman's first film since 1999, but you sincerely wish it wasn't. A logy, rambling period piece, it feels about as far away from the spirit of Amadeus as it's possible to get with wigs and britches.

Intense historical epic is for adults only.

Cumbersome and often stilted, Goya's Ghosts remains a worthy drama