Great performance by Jamie, great re-introduction to Ray Charles but bad script!

Rating: 4/10 (20 November 2005)

First of all before I go further with this, lemme just say that Ray Charles Robinson lived an amazing life for 73 years. First off, you have to remember he was born at the height of the Great Depression in the South in 1930. Then after dealing with tragedy losing his brother, his parents and his eyesight, he amazingly begins his recording career in Florida and Seattle before settling in California where he signed with his first label at 18. Then after signing with Atlantic, he innovates music bringing in soul, putting a jazz emphasis on his music, and later putting a funk emphasis on rock & roll, country and pop standards. All of this and he had his own record label, studio, office and owned his masters. He went on to become an international superstar and overcame heroin addiction at the height of his popularity and continued to amaze audiences until his death in L.A. (at his mansion) at 73.
Now onto the movie, for all of its hoopla about how this man went from darkness to light (as one of its televised ads said), it showcases nothing BUT darkness. We know that Ray was a deep blues man. I mean blues is about dealing with pain and he had tons. That's why the notion of him being soul music's architect has more merit. But there were also great moments in his life. For one, the movie is like a bad Hallmark/Lifetime movie. Two, never in his biography that was released in 1978, did he say that his brother's tragic death was the cause of him going into drugs, though he said his mother's death crushed him (and rightfully so, since she taught him how to deal with life blind). Ray said the heroin was his own doing. He wanted to get into all of that. It had nothing to do with how he was feeling inside. And regardless of what Taylor Hackford wants you to believe, Ray knew when the heroin was getting to him because he was facing jail time (he had been arrested three separate times for heroin and marijuana usage) so he quit in 1965 and never went back to needles. Maybe not the way he did in the movie (which was constructed poorly), but he got through it. Another thing, Ray said he had two mothers: Aretha and another woman who was close to his father named Mary Jane, who raised him after his mom passed, she's the one who didn't mind letting Ray do what he wanted to do and didn't mind spoiling him as opposed to Aretha, who taught Ray to be self-dependent. There's no mention of his dad in the film, there's also no mention of how he learned how to really play the piano (we see Ray play a little of Beethoven during one scene when he was getting the Raelettes together before going on tour) or how he learned how to compose music. There's also no shots of his work with Ruth Brown or Guitar Slim or none of those other blues/jazz/soul greats. In short, there's not enough of Ray's music to go around though it shortly explains the creations of "Mess Around", "I Got a Woman", "What'd I Say", "Georgia on My Mind" and "Hit the Road, Jack" but it's not enough. Though we hear some of Ray's early music, we don't get to see Ray get into the groove as much as we like to.
Much as it could be, for most of the film, Ray uses his women (which was a true story, he did), gets into heroin, hurts some of his friends and employees, kicks heroin and lives a good life though we never got passed 1965 only to see a brief final scene in 1979 when "Georgia On My Mind" is passed on as the national song for Georgia at the state legislature. Which brings us back to 1961 when Ray was supposedly banned from Georgia when he refused to sing at segregated Bell Auditorium. For all accounts, there was no protest of Ray performing there, there was no ban, and Ray wasn't the FIRST singer to protest segregated seating. In fact, Nat King Cole and Sam Cooke went through more hell trying to perform with integrated audiences back in the late-'50s. All Ray did was pay compensation but he continued to perform in Georgia passed 1961. Another thing which was funny was that we didn't get to see from Ray's first wife, Eileen Williams. And also Ray and his second wife Della divorced in 1977 and didn't stay together around the time Ray got to the state legislature in Georgia in '79. We never get to see the side of Ray where he apologized for his wrongdoings (and Ray admitted before his death how much of an "idiot" he was to some of his close friends including musicians). Also, the script was just bad. There was no real scenes to keep you glued except for the scenes when little Ray learned how to deal with life blind. That was probably THE most emotional scene in all the film. Made me cry. And that's what makes me mad. Jamie Foxx did deserve his accolades but it was more for Hollywood value than real-life value. But despite his shortcomings in his personal life, we at least get what was real - Ray Charles was REALLY a music genius. And it's this that we will forever remember him for. This movie is not the end-all, be-all of Ray Charles so don't be misguided into believing so.