Truncated and time-scrambled biography of singer Ray Charles, with a lot of back and forth between his childhood in rural Florida and his manhood circa 1948-65, to ensure that Jamie Foxx will never be absent from the screen for too long at a stretch. There's a nice scene of the newly blind boy at age seven or eight, getting his bearings from the aural co-ordinates around the wood shanty he calls home, while his mother stands by in silence and lets him figure it out for himself. There could have been more of that sort of thing. At two and a half hours, the movie taxes our fondness for this lugubrious wailer (otherwise known as the Genius of Soul); and the fact that he passed away in the same year in which the movie was released only tightens the emotional screws. The routine re-enactments of financial exploitation, marital infidelities, drug abuse, backstage discord among band members, etc., hope to be ennobled by the brand name of Ray Charles -- or more broadly, by the customary blackmail of True Story. Foxx does a commendable job of mimicking the trademark mannerisms -- the rocking motion whether walking or singing, the self-hug, the twenty-four-tooth grin -- but it's a performance condemned to stay on the surface, like a leaf on a pond. With Kerry Washington, Regina King, Clifton Powell; directed by Taylor Hackford. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
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