Word: raye
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There was something like ashy molasses in Ray Charles’ voice: dripping syrupy sweet with southern charm yet charged with gritty, unhewn candor, it resonated with a sense of immediacy and emotional clarity that was nothing short of divine...
...somehow, even after seventeen tedious years of development, Ray, based on Charles’ life, does not muster any semblance of the splendor within his music. The film lacks emotional attachment on any level and fails in every way as a meaningful addition to his life and legacy. With a mix of deceitful, manipulative Hollywood storytelling techniques masquerading as artistic strokes and tacky, unfocused, pop filmmaking, director Taylor Hackford manages to turn an amazing story of sheer will triumphing over adversity into a two-and-a-half hour mess that will damage Charles’ memory...
Jamie Foxx, star of Ray, has received considerable Oscar buzz for his almost perfect portrayal of Ray Charles—and deservedly so. From the close-eyed, contorted face that seems to interpret the world with tactile emotion to the quick paced, pitch-perfect, squeaky southern drawl, Foxx has Charles dead on. But with a script devoid of any genuine emotion, and a filmmaker who isn’t quite sure what he’s doing, Foxx’s performance does not resonate. It bears a greater resemblance to a three hour-long impression rather than an Oscar...
While most viewers under the age of 30 will know Ray Charles for his dirge-like rendition of “America the Beautiful,” or for his shiny-suit stint in a series of Pepsi commercials, Charles’ history is anything but clean. It is certainly not the stuff of our morally-obsessed pop culture. Throughout the film, we see Charles smoke his first joint (which he got from a midget, by the way), sleep with countless women, become a heroin junkie, and systematically, one by one, alienate every person who ever gave a damn about...
...gets worse: Ray is strangely more comic than dramatic. While most contemporary dramas (especially biopics) could easily be called tragicomic, with jokes sprinkled here and there to complexify our sympathies with key characters, this film is too funny, creating a dramatic space in which characters are impossible to judge. When the film’s most loathsome characters are simultainiously its most engaging characters, the viewer’s interpretation of the film is split between what the diegesis is attempting to explicitly say and the way these characters actually show on screen...