An Overlong Episodic Biopic of Ray Charles with No Heart

Rating: 5/10 (6 October 2004)

Jamie Foxx may encapsulate Ray Charles Robinson, but Taylor Hackford's film falls into the same traps as most Hollywoodized biopics: it's episodic, the storytelling lacks heart and an engaging storyline. To start off, at a 2 ½ hour running time, Ray is just too long, with too many repetitive sequences that really show us the same thing.
Just like Will Smith in the recent biopic film Ali by a much superior filmmaker Michael Man, Jamie Foxx gives an amazing performance, but that's all there is to the film. Ray tells the story of Ray Charles Robinson-he dropped the Robinson because of famous boxer Sugar Ray Robinson-event by event, splicing in memories from his childhood that haunt him.
The problem is that we don't spend enough time in these childhood flashbacks to be emotionally involved with the young characters. Therefore, when the traumatic event happens, that affects Charles throughout his life; it doesn't carry enough emotional weight to really affect the audience.
And the closure of this trauma, and of the film, is bogus. When Charles finds himself in a rehabilitation center after years of drug addiction, a hard-nosed doctor tells him he must consent to psychotherapy. Suddenly, Charles is his older self in his childhood flashback and finds a quick resolution. This ending feels tacked on, a Hollywood ending where everything is resolved through a nice and easy flashback.
Therein lays the real problem of the film: there's no real structure here, there's no heart in the storytelling. Like the biopic Frida or even a more closely related music biopic Great Balls of Fire!, Ray just tells the events of Charles's life, with no real story or emotional ties. Charles changed music, changed the business of music, and fought for Civil Rights. But there's no real focus in the film, no feeling; it seems to just be an overview of his life, without delving into the heart of the man.
If you want a history lesson of Ray Charles and the events of his life, then this may accomplish that-I just have to wonder how many facts Hollywood had to change to make it fit all nice and tidy into this film. Jamie Foxx, who is made up to look like Charles and gets his mannerisms down pact, gives a career performance in an otherwise mediocre Hollywood, mass produced biopic.