Phoenix Painful in "Walk the Line"

Rating: 2/10 (3 December 2005)

Comparing "Walk the Line" to "Ray", is comparing night to day. Both are biopics of famous singers with troubled pasts, but the similarities end there. Phoenix's singing is akin to fingernails going down a chalkboard. Witherspoon saves what little is good in the film. Phoenix's acting is palpable, but as an entertainer, Cash was a singer, not an actor. As a Johnny Cash fan, listening to the music in this movie is arduous. Phoenix couldn't carry a tune in a bucket and fails miserably to hit any of Cash's famous low, soul gripping notes. Why the studio didn't dub over Phoenix as did Universal in most of "Ray" is truly dumbfounding. Foxx sang a few songs but for the most part, gave way to the authentic Ray Charles. The irony is, Foxx can sing. Phoenix butchers the Man in Black's warmly cold, rumbling deep sounds that made Cash legendary. When Sam Phillips of Sun Records asks "Cash" in the movie "if (he) only had one song to sing, what would it be," Phoenix lumbers into a drolling off-key rendition of Folsom Prison as could only be worsened by American Idol's William Hung.