Most of what I had heard about the movie Ray about the life of musician Ray Charles was that actor Jamie Foxx’s performance was questioned as to whether or not it was really good or he was just doing a good Ray Charles impersonation. I hadn’t heard anyone call it bad. I had merely heard that some people wondered if a good impression counted as good acting.
I don’t know the answer to that question. But I can watch the movie and judge it on its own merits.
Blind piano player Ray Robinson (Foxx) opens the movie traveling north from Florida to Seattle. He’s the son of a single mother sharecropper, and he has some haunting memories that only gradually come out over the course of the movie. Ray’s talent gradually gets him notice as he moves up in his career, but he also develops a drug habit and becomes something of a womanizer, even after he marries a good, church-going woman (Kerry Washington). Eventually, those flashbacks show the tragic drowning death of a brother and how Ray went blind of some sort of illness, where his mother’s tough love taught Ray how to largely navigate the world on his own. Along the way he writes or performs the songs he’s best known for, has some tough times, and then eventually goes clean and gets some much-deserved honors. You know, the standard plot for a musician’s biopic.
If anything, the movie had something of an abrupt ending. Ray goes to rehab for his heroin addiction, gets clean, and then the movie instantly goes to the standard text explaining how the rest of his life went, aside from a quick scene where Ray was welcomed back to his home state of Georgia after being effectively banned from the state after refusing to honor a contract to play a segregated music hall. It was appropriate, but at the same time, the end of the movie is still rather abrupt.
So, how was Foxx’s portrayal of Ray Charles? Well, it was good. Was it an impersonation? Maybe. I will say, Foxx does have a lot of quiet moments as Ray, showing the man’s guilt over actions he couldn’t have controlled as a child but also ones he was fully accountable for as an adult. There’s a charm to it, just as there was a charm to the real Ray Charles. As such, I can see why Foxx won an Oscar, but I’d rather not wade into the debate whether or not what he did was really acting.
But for the rest of the movie, it sure did come across as a standard musician’s biopic. Ray had some talent, he developed some demons, it created problems with his family, and eventually he overcame them. It very much is a standard formula these days. If anything, here we saw Ray’s wife didn’t leave him as happens so often in these stories, but that may be due more to reality than anything. And as much as Foxx’s performance was as good as it was, the rest of the cast, many of whom are very recognizable actors, don’t quite rise to that level. I mean, Regina King is a national treasure, but here as a back-up singer who becomes Ray’s most tragic extramarital affair, I didn’t see anything special. That said, that had less to do with King and more to do with what little she was given to do outside of a rote role. So, good central performance and good music (clearly sung by the real Ray Charles), but for the rest, a rather standard movie.
Grade: B-
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