Best picture? Possibly. Best Actor? DEFINITELY!

Rating: 9/10 (17 February 2005)

The Academy could do worse than to award RAY Best Picture at the Oscars this year. I'm pretty sure they'll give Jamie Foxx Best Actor...
I'm not a particular fan of Ray Charles. Nor do I like biopics as a rule. But this film elevates itself above the ordinary for two reasons: Jamie Foxx, and Ray Charles himself.
First off, hats off to the late, great Mr. Charles himself. This was his story, and his movie (and he has an Executive Produder credit to show for it). This is not the most flattering portrayal, dealing with Charles' drug addiction and womanizing with extraordinary frankness. That Charles would allow this much of his life to be publicized so openly only suggests to me that he thought they were important elements in considering his life in its entirety. My respect for Charles as a man has grown, not because of these faults so much as his willingness to acknowledge them and accept responsibility for them.
Secondly, Jamie Foxx portrays Ray Charles with one of the best performances I've seen in years. He is relaxed and confident in this role, and it seems more like more like Charles just kind of moved in to Foxx's body for a few months while they filmed. This was a role that could have easily come across as a mannered caricature (see Eddie Murphy's impression of Stevie Wonder on '80s SNL reruns), and instead it plays as utterly believable.
It's the strength of Foxx's portrayal, in fact, that prompted me to see this movie to begin with; I wasn't expecting much more than a great performance. As it turned out, I was pleasantly surprised with an engaging script that mostly dodges clichés. This is an entertaining, engaging movie--much more than the usual music-industry bio. This movie moves along far better than something 153 minutes long should.
It isn't flawless. The secondary characters are pretty two-dimensional, and I swear all the performance scenes "on the road" in the early part of the movie were shot on the same set.
Worse pictures have won the "Best Picture" Oscar. And Foxx is simply GOING to win for Best Actor.