Goya's Ghosts

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Ghosts is one of Forman's most ambitious and daring films; would that all of its ambitions were fulfilled.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Goya's Ghosts is like the sketchbook Goya might have made with a camera.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

An oddly structured tale about Francisco Goya and the Spain that he lived and worked in.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

There is so little emotionally or intellectually at stake in most popular entertainment that Goya's Ghosts, Milos Forman's challenging, compelling and wildly uneven film, shoots like a cannonball into the solar plexus. I can't remember when I've been so physically and mentally shattered.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Far from an embarrassment and a generally fine piece of work.

Variety Jonathan Holland

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

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Though not nearly as perfect as Amadeus and The People vs. Larry Flynt (to cite two of Forman's previous semibiographical efforts), Goya's Ghosts uses the lives of artists and historical figures to show us the best and the worst of our human impulses.

Miami Herald Marta Barber

Captures the essence of the period -- an intriguing, backward era in Spain -- but without the emotional impact that such a film requires.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Although the period feeling is convincing, Forman doesn't seem to know exactly what he wants to say about this intensely complex era - and that leaves his cast floundering.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Lavish production and wardrobe design, as well as beautiful cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe make Goya's Ghosts lovely to look at, but as a portrait of the artist, the movie is a letdown.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Below-the-line credits are terrific, which only increases an overwhelming sense of disappointment with the film's failed ambitions.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The film is mostly forced and heavyhanded. Forman first thought of using Goya to tell a story about the Inquisition several decades ago. Yet this movie appears to be as much about American behavior post-Sept. 11 as it is about 18th-century Spain or the Communist Czechoslovakia of Forman's youth.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Whatever the faults of Goya's Ghosts -- and there are several -- you've got to hand it to director Milos Forman: It takes real chutzpah to cast Randy Quaid as the king of Spain.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

The biggest tragedy about Milos Forman's foray into the life and times of Spanish artist Francisco De Goya is the waste of so much great raw material.

The New York Times Matt Zoller Seitz

An unwieldy mix of political satire and lavish period soap opera.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The film's seriousness of intent is unimpeachable – Forman and Carriere see disturbing echoes of the modern world in 18th-century Spain -- but the execution borders on farce.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

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: an overblown melodrama complete with coincidence building upon coincidence and plot threads that are left unresolved.

Village Voice Charles Petersen

The film takes as many plot-twists as "Pirates of the Caribbean"; distinctly Goya in its emphasis on the grotesque, it shows none of the Spaniard's artistic economy.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

The whole thing is handsomely mounted, with plenty of Goya paintings and supposed observations about the ironies of history and the cyclical nature of life, etc. Forman's always been a huckster, but I never thought I'd see him waste this many good actors on a movie this bad.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Handsome but stilted.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Though much blood is shed, the film is bloodless.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

If Forman is trying to communicate that art isn't an effective way to change American society, he's proved his point neatly with this muddled, wandering dud.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

An overstuffed turkey that's entertaining for all the wrong reasons.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

The Spanish Inquisition was better summed up in an eight-minute musical number by Mel Brooks than in the entirety of Goya's Ghosts, an across-the-board disaster from one of my favorite directors, Milos Forman.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

In a season of digital bombast, it can be a relief to walk into a stodgy life-of-the-great-man costume drama. Goya's Ghosts, before it turns into a messy, horse-drawn load, achieves a civilized stuffiness that gives off its own mild pleasure.