Metacritic reviews

As a musical biography, Ray is driven by the primal excitement of rock-and-soul at the moment of its discovery.

If there were an Oscar for ensemble acting, Ray would win in a stroll.

Jamie Foxx gets so far inside the man and his music that he and Ray Charles seem to breathe as one.

Bursting at the seams with music, Taylor Hackford's ambitious film provides a good sense of the pioneering entertainer's extraordinary journey and brings it to life with plenty of colorful detail.

Unlike his songs, the film holds something back. It goes deep into a life filled with as much trouble and pain as triumph and accomplishment but never quite gets at the root of who Ray is.

It's hobbled by the too-familiar conventions of the musical biopic: with so many chapters of Charles's life to cover, Hackford's movie never finds a rhythm, a groove, to settle into. It wins its battles without winning the war.

Sure, it’s the Jamie Foxx breakout role. But the movie around it is so systematically “inspirational” that it comes perilously close to sabotaging the breakout.

Sluggish, conventional, and almost completely lacking in energy.

Hackford's movie falls into a meandering saunter. As the music grows dull, so does the movie.

As Ray nears its abrupt ending, it veers into camp silliness, complete with a psychedelic freak-out withdrawal sequence straight out of a Roger Corman LSD epic.