A "Lady Sings The Blues" for our time

Rating: 3/10 (2 January 2006)

Well, if biopics are your thing, I suppose this is perfect. It's a worthy bore, the 'importance' of the subject and Themes (with a capital 'T') justifying a dull TV-movie presentation. Taylor Hackford couldn't direct traffic.
'Ray' plods through the motions, leaving no cliché of the genre unrepeated. A classic Hollywood musical biopic from the 1940's, but with an all-black cast.
In other words, it's a highly manipulative soap, with incidental music. Very like "The Glenn Miller Story", actually. Plays the "mom" card a lot. Really it's a women's pic, and the women are great.
Jamie Foxx... hmmm. Think Dustin Hoffman in 'Rain Man', but with pecs. The man works very hard; does all the lip-synching and fake piano-playing, does his own singing some of the time, all very efficient. In fact, he's kept so busy there's no time for any actual acting. (The Oscar always goes to the actor playing the afflicted genius. Ray Charles was a black blind junkie; Foxx couldn't lose.) As always with musical bio-pics, the banality of the treatment is overwhelmed by the brilliance of the music.