Grade: B

Verdict: Jamie Foxx shakes his thang in a marvelous performance.

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
Cox News Service

Like "Ali," a movie it often recalls, "Ray" can't decide what becomes a legend most. The genius, be it boxing or blues, is a given. But how do you fill in the gaps?

Again, like "Ali," you let your star loose and wait for the award nominations to come pouring in.

Jamie Foxx is incredible as music giant Ray Charles.

Maybe that's the wrong word. The amazing thing about Foxx's performance is that he's so very credible. There are scenes with him at the piano that so completely capture Charles' cadences, the head swerve, the body language, the smile, that you would swear it was footage of the master himself --- except he's too beautifully lit.

Director Taylor Hackford's passion for Charles, the man and his music, is supremely evident throughout the movie. He stresses Charles' uniqueness as well as his celebrity. Not just that he was blind. Not just that he grew up dirt-poor in the South as Ray Charles Robinson (born in Albany, he changed his name so as not to be confused with boxer Sugar Ray Robinson). Not just that he was a black man who found success in a Jim Crow nation.

More than that, Charles never met a musical genre he didn't like --- or couldn't master. Jazz, blues, soul, gospel, R&B, rock, pop, even country --- he did them all. He kept growing and evolving, which is what saved him from being just another undiscovered genius on the so-called Chitlin Circuit.

Still, the picture is overlong and often too by-the-numbers, ticking off the expected life passages almost too literally: the tough, tragedy-ridden childhood (showcasing a tremendous performance by newcomer Sharon Warren as Ray's strong, loving mother). The rough early days on the road, where band members white and black tried to take advantage of him. His struggle to find his own voice instead of being the next-best Nat "King" Cole. His brave stand --- the first by any American entertainer --- against playing whites-only theaters in the early '60s. (This resulted in Charles not playing whites-only venues in Georgia for years. But he returned triumphantly in 1979, when "Georgia on My Mind" became the state song, performing it before a joint meeting of the Georgia Senate and House of Representatives.)

ÊHis courtship of and marriage to Della Bea (Kerry Washington, another good performance). The on-the-road womanizing that almost broke up his family. His ascension to the top of the business, outselling Sinatra. And his struggle with addiction, which gives Foxx a late-movie writhing-in-rehab scene that's meant to increase his Oscar chances but is one of the least effective bits in a brilliant performance.

"Ray" ends midcareer in 1966, another indication that Hackford wasn't sure what he wanted to say about Charles, aside from telling his early life story and preserving his music on film for generations to come. As you might expect, the soundtrack is glorious.

Yet the movie draws most of its strength from how well it --- make that, Foxx --- connects with an audience. For all its hero worship, "Ray" never loses sight of Charles' rascally "country dumb" smarts, which Foxx, with superb comic timing, nails cold.

In the late 1940s, when a racist bus driver says he ain't gonna drive no blind n-word to Seattle, Charles/Foxx smiles, nods, shuffles ever so slightly and says he may have left his eyes behind on Omaha Beach, but he knows Uncle Sam has a job waiting for him in Seattle.

It's a total lie, but the driver melts. So do we. And that's the real secret of "Ray's" success.