Metascore
90 out of 100

Universal acclaim - based on 34 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 32 out of 34
  2. Negative: 1 out of 34
  1. 100
    At a time when too many movies focus every scene on a $20 million star, an Altman film is like a party with no boring guests.
  2. It's a scintillating comedy-drama and one of Altman's most richly moving and entertaining pictures.
  3. This territory is familiar if you remember the great BBC miniseries "Upstairs Downstairs," but Altman gives it a new twist with his restlessly roaming camera and incisively satirical approach. He's still near the peak of his powers.
  4. 100
    It ranks among Robert Altman's best work ever, and that its many satisfactions derive in large part from a superbly written screenplay by Julian Fellowes that has no equal this year.
  5. Reviewed by: Mike Clark
    100
    The movie is so fun that it wouldn't need the mystery to be top-notch entertainment.
  6. Reviewed by: Jay Carr
    100
    Never has a film taken such relish in between-the-wars malice as Gosford Park.
  7. In the best Altman manner there are no real heroes and villains, only people trapped by their vanity and ambition and the straitjackets of classism.
  8. A love affair between performer and filmmaker. The director shows off his ardor by eliciting from his actors aspects of their gifts that they themselves may not have known they had.
  9. 100
    At his best, Altman turns us into interlopers who have stumbled into a world that seems to predate us and persuades us it will continue to teem with life long after we leave the theater.
  10. 100
    Gosford Park abounds in scenes to savor. It's a feast, and one of Altman's best.
  11. A virtuoso ensemble piece to rival the director's "Nashville" and "Short Cuts" in its masterly interweaving of multiple characters and subplots.
  12. Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    100
    The exhilaration is slow to build. It doesn't come from any one thing but from countless crosscurrents, tiny bits of color that fill out the portrait.
  13. 100
    Altman achieves his dream of a truly organic form, in which everyone is connected to everyone else, and life circulates around a central group of ideas and emotions in bristling orbits. [14 Jan 2002, p. 92]
  14. The movie might almost be winking at the fact that any single one of these performers could easily be the featured star of his or her own upper-crust period piece.
  15. 90
    Isn't much more than marvelous entertainment -- but then, that's a lot right there.
  16. It's the style of the thing, not the plot, that is the attraction here, the great way the cast has with the snarky dialogue.
  17. Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    90
    Taking advantage of a splendid cast, a sharply focused script and the fresh English setting, "Gosford Park" emerges as one of the most satisfying of Robert Altman's numerous ensemble pictures.
  18. A wickedly astute and beautiful comedy of manners-cum-murder mystery, it's too dense, and occasionally confusing, to grasp fully the first time around. How lucky, then, that it's also too much fun to see just once.
  19. Without hesitation, I hand the comic award to Smith. She plays a pinched guest known as Constance, Countess of Trentham, to such a hilarious tee, her tee runneth over.
  20. 90
    Altman's technique also allows his huge cast to act up a storm, in the best sense. Gosford Park has roughly half the best actors in England in it.
  21. There are even more characters of interest here than in "Nashville."
  22. 88
    So deliciously absorbing and well done.
  23. No matter which floor you're on, the huge cast is extraordinary, and Altman gives the actors free rein to bring their characters to life despite such close quarters.
  24. 88
    What a relief to see a movie in which an audience responds with peals of laughter to subtle facial shifts as well as punch lines.
  25. 80
    We have an authentic Old Master working in our midst, and Gosford Park will at the very least remind everyone how masterful a helmsman Altman can be.
  26. 80
    As with Altman's best movies, Gosford Park is above all an entrancing hum of atmosphere and texture.
  27. Reviewed by: David Ansen
    80
    A fine, well-groomed entertainment, but the road it takes has already been well paved.
  28. It's a very funny movie in that sniffy Brit way.
  29. It isn't about where you get, but how you get there -- and the getting there is a chewy delight.
  30. At its best it is one of the most dynamic movies from a most dynamic filmmaker, now 76.
  31. Reviewed by: Carla Meyer
    75
    A British costume film that's funny but not at all fusty.
  32. Qualifies as a solid double, maybe a triple.
  33. 50
    Such a glorious cast, deployed to such trivial effect!
  34. Reviewed by: Richard Schickel
    30
    Tedium overwhelms caring well before this endless film finally concludes.
User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 125 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 45 out of 83
  2. Negative: 31 out of 83
  1. jojojo
    0
    I have a high IQ so this movie is great! I have a low self esteem so I'm going to rave about this movie and say how my IQ is better than others here. Full Review »
  2. 10
    One of the smartest films I have seen in a while. I found myself captivated by the drama surrounding these characters and by the numerous plot twists. The brilliant cast also contributes to making this the excellent film that it is. Full Review »
  3. No doubt GOSFORD PARK is Robert Altman’s pinnacle and one of my apple-of-the-eye for all-time, so this has been my third time watched it, after a roughly 5-year-interval, and it prompts to me how miraculously ample the characters are, each time, for me, as though I was watching a pristine one. (It seems that I must pick up DOWNTOWN ABBEY now, I have a sweet tooth for period English dramas, I guess). The kaleidoscopic potpourri of characters upstairs and downstairs in a 1930’s British villa assemble an impeccable imagery of a disgraced bourgeois shallowness, which is also suffered under the lash for its snobbism and in lack of artistic appreciation. The film is incisive in every possible way to functions a systematic and absorbing participation for its devotees to immerse in its 140 minutes running time and refreshingly procure something new with recurrent viewings without feeling a shade insipid. The cast is overpoweringly excellent, both individually or collectively (the prowess of Altman to rein the hodgepodge dramatic personae is without peer), my personal favorites are Mirren, Watson, Smith, Gambon, Macdonald and Bates (ranking according to my preference and all in my current year top 10 list). I also love the idea of putting the murder case into a secondary priority, since it is far from any Agatha Christie’s detective story, every character hides their respective secrets inside and it is for the fun of audience to be prudent and fascinating by the story itself , which I consider is the paramount achievement any director and his team could ever offer. I cannot admit myself to be an utter zealot of Altman’s work, for example, MASH (1970) I really cannot enjoy (a 5/10), but I make a promise to watch the film for a fourth time, I’m not sure when, maybe another couple of years, anyway, the film is in the top rank of my guilty pleasure list. Full Review »