a dull, sloppy, and manipulative film

Rating: 4/10 (9 July 2005)

First of all, I think that anyone who has seen this film can agree that Jamie Foxx's performance as the late great Ray Charles is stunning. Foxx has captured the musician's nuances and flaws to the Nth degree, and has crafted here a truly memorable and passionate performance.
If only the movie itself were good enough to hold him.
Taylor Hackford's Ray instead is a shoddy thrown together mess. Transitions between scenes are inconsistent (and not even to the level of experimental, they simply don't work), his scenes are far too short, and he takes what should have been meditative character study and turns it into hyped-up melodrama. The worst part may be, however, that the film itself doesn't even vindicate its subject.
Throughout the movie we are shown a man who makes tons of wrong decisions. (MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW) He cheats on his wife, he ditches the small-time studio that got him famous, he betrays and swindles his friends, and he descends into a life of depravity with drugs. At the end of the movie, after a climax of his detoxification, Charles has still been cruel to his friends and colleagues, he makes no effort to apologize, and his wife is still racked with pain from his years of infidelity and drug abuse. But rather than let the movie end painfully and introspectively on these character's plights, or even take more time and show a retribution in denouement to give the film justification to end on an uplifting note, the film simply ends with this message: Ray Charles sold more than _____ million records in his career, he has fans all over the world. (END MINOR SPOILERS) Could there be a more shallow way to sum up a tortured artist's life? After 2 hours of meditation on exactly what was WRONG with Ray Charles, Hackford expects us to cheer him on as an old man simply because he, yes, made a lot of money. He was a commercial success.
The few parts of the film that attempt to cover up this sham are simply emotional manipulative. Ray's flashbacks to his mother are a messy and propagandist way, at best, of portraying Charles' inner dilemma.
'Ray' is a film that SHOULD'VE been about a man who pioneered a revolution in modern music. If it was made to be celebratory, it should have celebrated a melodic genius' accomplishments. And to some extent, 'Ray' did this. But Hackford's choice to include Charles' personal strife in the movie too was directly averse to any sort of celebration. Yes, we needed to see these things in order to understand the man behind the music. Yes, we needed to understand his flaws to understand his life. But the movie stumbled over these aspirations.
'Ray' is a movie that aims to be uplifting, and even does a good job of giving the semblance that it is uplifting. But it is not uplifting from an objective point-of-view, and worst of all, it is not human. To portray a human is to portray a flawed and complex creature. 'Ray' portrays this up to the point where the ending comes. And then it decides no, we need to make our audience feel happy. And so it betrays the entire spirit of not only Ray Charles' life, but his often mournful, spiritual, and HUMAN music. Just to let us know that in the end, he was a commercial success.
So that we enjoy watching it, and make IT a commercial success.