In Better Man, pop star Robbie Williams is portrayed by a CGI chimp-manParamount Pictures
- Better Man
- Directed by Michael Gracey
- Written by Simon Gleeson, Oliver Cole and Michael Gracey
- Starring Robbie Williams (voice), Jonno Davies and Steve Pemberton
- Classification 14A; 135 minutes
- Opens in Toronto theatres Dec. 25; expands to other cities Jan. 10
Critic’s Pick
In 2019, director Dexter Fletcher injected razzle and dazzle into the pop star bio-pic genre when he made Rocketman, a sumptuous musical about the rise, fall and rise again of Elton John, a dandy British recording artist from the 1970s with daddy issues, gold records and a raging cocaine habit. Flamboyant, theatrical, and with dark undertones, the film shouted its belief in the power of music as it sang and danced its way to a redemptive conclusion.
Now here comes Michael Gracey, tasked to make a biopic about Robbie Williams, a British chart-topper from the 1990s with daddy issues, gold records and a raging cocaine habit. There are no rules saying the Australian filmmaker could not make a brooding but fantastical musical about a musician’s rises, falls, redemption, etc. But how could he do so without being accused of stealing Rocketman’s jet fuel?
Hold my banana, Gracey said.
In Better Man, Williams is portrayed by a CGI chimp-man – flat nose, head-to-toe hair and everything. (Williams voices his adult monkey-person self.) Call it a stunt, call it daft, call it Rocketman Meets Planet of the Apes, but don’t forget to call Gracey when the Academy Award nominations come out. Better Man is a triumph of cheek and imagination. Gracey attempts much but actually manages to accomplish all that he set out to do.
Robbie Williams in Better Man.Photo Credit: Ben King/Paramount Pictures
In an early scene, Williams’s showbiz-minded father tells his boy that an entertainer needs to risk it all – “whatever it takes.” Good advice. Gracey, who also co-wrote the film, took it. As did the father, a boozing small-time entertainer played by Steve Pemberton, who later abandons his wife and young son to chase his own limelight.
Why is Williams a chimp? Because that is how he sees himself, as a dancing monkey, hired to please and amuse. His dad, a devotee of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., drilled a give-them-what-they-paid-for ethos into his wide-eyed son.
The story begins in Stoke-on-Trent, an industrial centre in Staffordshire, England. The city is portrayed as dreary, all soot, cobblestones and grubby pubs. (Why do all British stories always start in these gritty places? Doesn’t anyone grow up in lovely Cornwall or the bucolic Cotswolds?) After stealing the show in an elementary school production of The Pirates of Penzance, we fast forward to Williams as the youngest member of the successful boy band Take That. He dares to steal the microphone from the group’s lead singer during a performance.
He’s brazen and ambitious but plagued by anxiety and self-doubt. Unmanageable, he’s kicked out of Take That, but rebounds as a solo star with hits such as Angel and She’s the One. He gets the girl too, but none of it is enough. Moody boozing and coke binging ensues.
Aesthetically, Better Man is surreal and high-styled. Recreated concert performances are wild – the Knebworth Park scene literally goes ape – and the choreographed numbers are sophisticated.
Musician biopic tropes are not avoided: the shifty manager, the boyhood chum left behind, the gold records smashed in a mansion-trashing meltdown. An underwater scene looks great but drowns in metaphor.
I’m convinced Williams would not be a sympathetic figure if he were played by a flesh-and-blood actor. His self-pity is certainly unattractive. And, yet, his redemption feels earned by the time the film arrives to an outrageously sentimental finale involving a performance of the song My Way. The irony of Better Man is that a chimpanzee representation makes the man all the more human.
