MOVIE REVIEW

By John Anderson, Newsday

Jazz plus soul equals genius: Ray Charles is given a superb portrayal by Jamie Foxx, though in a movie far less interesting than he is - or Charles was. With Regina King, Kerry Washington, Curtis Armstrong, Bokeem Woodbine, Sharon Warren. Screenplay by James L. White. Directed by Taylor Hackford. 2:35 (adult language, situations, drug content). At area theaters.

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It sounds mock-ironic, but to know Ray Charles best, listen to "You Don't Know Me." Recorded in 1962, it's a song ostensibly about unrequited love between a man and woman, but was also heard at the time as an anthem of unrequited love between the races. Either way, it's a tune marinated in regret, bruised dignity but unvanquished soul. And after 42 years, it hasn't aged a bit.

Jamie Foxx, who has performed the not-so-mean feat of stealing movies from both Will Smith ("Ali," 2001) and Tom Cruise ("Collateral," 2004), performs much more than an impersonation in Taylor Hackford's "Ray," an all-too-standard biopic that charts the rise of one of the most remarkable voices in American pop music (Is there anyone besides Sinatra who even comes close?) and the troubled path of the man behind it.

Predictably, Foxx gets the physical stuff right - the swaying head, the don't-patronize- me-'cause-I'm-patronizing-you smile, the trademark cadences of Charles' speaking voice (the singing is Charles himself). He also gets the dry, sly-foxy way the singer had with a laugh line.

Ultimately, Foxx steals "Ray" from Ray Charles; only Hackford's last-minute clips of the real-life singer - a tactic that is both a betrayal of the performer and a cheap stab at co-opted credibility (and was perpetrated by Spike Lee in "Malcolm X") reminds us that what we've been watching is a performance.

Foxx reinvents Ray Charles the way Ray Charles reinvented pop music. Christened Ray Charles Robinson (the boxer's fame forcing the name change) and blind from age 7, Charles merged gospel fervor with R&B, injected more sex into American pop than the American population was ready to comfortably take and was haunted - according to James L. White's screenplay, at least - by the drowning death of his younger brother back home in north Florida. The boyhood sequences are the film's worst, faux-noble and overwrought - one senses not just a straining attempt to affix a conventional dramatic structure to an unconventional life, but a way of absolving Charles his various sins, including heroin addiction and womanizing.

What else could be expected? The poor man's fearsome mother (Sharon Warren) keeps materializing before him, while water gives him the trembling jitters. No wonder he shot up.

The music, of course, is tremendous: Charles, who died in June, is heard mostly via the originals but also in a few new cuts recorded for the film. And sometimes, the Hollywood moments pay off: Stuck with 20 minutes to fill at a gig where they've run out of material, Charles and his band spontaneously create their first big hit - "What'd I Say" - on the fly and Top-40 ready. It's total malarkey, and electrifying.

The rest of "Ray" should have been, too. But even if it's not, Foxx is worth the price of admission. And so is the subject, whose voice hangs in the air long after the final credits have, like the good times, rolled.