Review – Ray

Ray Charles was a brilliant musician. You don’t have to know anything about his personal life to know that. All you have to do is listen to his music. Nonetheless, I take it from this production that he had some problems with drugs and infidelity. That’s interesting enough, but if I’m being offered the choice between spending two and a half hours watching the seemingly endless pageant of his shortcomings or just listening to him sing and play the piano, I’m going with the latter. I also thought a lot of the editing gimmicks were a little over-wrought, cliché and/or amateurish. Finally, I wish I’d left the extra footage feature off when I watched it on DVD. The extra scenes rarely added much to the story, and the pausing and restarting was more than a little annoying. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of Jamie Foxx’s performance. Who would have thought that a guy who made his reputation playing stereotypical goofball roles could do such a solid job? Mildly amusing