Ray (5/10)

Very disappointing. I came out of Collateral eager to see what Jamie Foxx would do with a weightier role. And while Foxx was fine, the movie was not.

Ray makes the most fatal mistake of all biopics -- instead of telling stories about the man and the legend, it merely lays out a chronology. The film starts off promisingly with effective flashback scenes hinting at a haunting past. However, after the half-way point, everything that's on screen only serves to bring about another newspaper headline. The characters don't stay on screen for more than three minutes anymore; instead, we are presented with flash presentations of different events in Ray Charles' life. Very quickly, I lost all identification with any of the characters, and was begging for the history lessons to stop. The movie culminates with a final, imaginary scene that resolves Ray's ghosts from the past. This scene is unnecessarily uplifting, offensively cheesy and only emphasizes how phony the whole movie rings.

Jamie Foxx was fine and believable as Ray Charles. But he was never given many scenes of much emotional weight that holds for more than five minutes, and therefore, never evolves from mere caricature to character. I much prefer him in Collateral.

In any case, god I hope this film doesn't make it into the Oscars. Jamie Foxx can get his Best Actor nod, but do not waste a slot in Best Picture.