Better Man review

BETTER MAN: 

ROBBIE WILLIAMS BIOPIC MADE ME GO BANANAS! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: **** out of 4

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Robbie Williams (as a CGI chimpanzee) in Better Man

 

            The life and career of British pop singer, Robbie Williams comes to the screen in the most surreal way possible in Better Man, a musical biopic from director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman). Unlike, The Bob Dylan biopic I reviewed recently, A Complete Unknown where I knew a fair amount of his songs but didn’t know much about his life, I know absolutely nothing about Robbie Williams’ life/career and the only songs of his I heard were ones featured on soundtracks to movies like A Knight’s Tale, De-Lovely, and Cars 2. 

            So, I’m going into this with hardly any knowledge of Robbie Williams and will be judging it as a film which certainly got my attention when I first saw the trailer. A music biopic where the real-life person is portrayed as a CGI anthropomorphic chimpanzee, what kind of coked-out fever dream am I looking at? I need to check this out ASAP. 

            And I’m very glad I did because Better Man is freaking awesome and one of the most unique music biopics I’ve seen since Rocketman in 2019. Yes, a movie about Robbie Williams as a computer-animated monkey exceeded my expectations in just about every way. 

            The film tells the life story of singer-songwriter, Robbie Williams (voice and motion capture by Jonno Davies-Kingsman: The Secret Service) who is portrayed as a CG chimpanzee in the film though no other characters in the movie comment on this. The movie chronicles Robbie’s meteoric rise, dramatic fall, and remarkable resurgence as it follows him from childhood, to being the youngest member of chart-topping boyband, Take That, through to his unparalleled achievements as a solo artist – all the while confronting the challenges that fame and success can bring. 

            The film also stars Williams himself as the narrator, Steve Pemberton (The League of Gentlemen, Doctor Who,The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) as Robbie’s father Peter Williams/Conway, Kate Mulvany (Griff the Invisible, The Great Gatsby (2013), Elvis) as Robbie’s mother Janet Williams, Alison Steadman (The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Topsy-Turvy, The King’s Man) as Robbie’s grandmother Betty Williams, Damon Herriman (Justified, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Mortal Kombat (2021)) as Nigel Martin-Smith, Tom Budge (Crash, The Proposition, Son of a Gun) as Guy Chambers, Anthony Hayes (Animal Kingdom, Burning Man, Gold) as Chris Briggs, and John O’May (Late Night with the Devil) as Terry Swinton. 

            Overall, Better Man probably won’t appeal to a wide audience that much because of its bizarre concept, but those willing to look beyond the Robbie Williams CGI chimpanzee will be greeted by an energetic, in your face, and wild take on a music biopic that still has a surprising amount of emotional weight to it. 

Sure, the idea of a movie about Robbie Williams’ life where he’s depicted as a chimpanzee is rather odd, but it actually makes a lot more sense than you’d think. Williams always considered himself to be “less evolved than other people” and this portrayal is essentially a reflection of his self-perception and state of mind and it works very well here. 

Admittedly, I was snickering at the whole scenario at first, but as the film went on I just accepted the Robbie Williams chimp and found myself getting invested in his life story. To the point where I often forgot I was watching a CG chimp and saw the real Robbie Williams in its place. 

The CG animation and motion capture on Robbie are amazing and almost of the same quality as Andy Serkis in the recent Planet of the Apes movies. It actually looks like he’s really there interacting with people and objects in scenes and the animators captured Robbie Williams’ facial expressions into the CG chimp flawlessly, it’s eerie how much I could see the real Robbie in the character’s face. 

The movie does have some musical numbers sprinkled in (Though it’s not exactly a full-on musical) and they are spectacular in terms of visuals, editing, and choreography which I described as “The Greatest Showman on Crack” as I was watching it. They have amazing momentum and energy in every sequence, you just never want them to end once they start because they’re so crazy and do a stellar job moving the story along and giving insight on Robbie Williams. 

The Greatest Showman was kind of a hit-or-miss movie, but the musical numbers in it were amazing and the same can be said about the ones here. They bring a lot of vibrant energy to the film and I even found myself tapping my foot to many songs during the movie (I want the soundtrack now!). 

 It doesn’t just stop at musical numbers because one thing Better Man excels at, it’s visual storytelling particularly with depicting Robbie’s rise and fall from grace. It’s one thing to show a famous musician having drug and/or alcohol problems in a biopic, but to see Robbie falling off a flight of stairs and it changes to a different location right before he hits the floor and everything around him starting to close in on him is absolutely brilliant and ironically more effective than just seeing the musician being an asshole because of drug addiction. 

The best part of the movie is even with the CG motion-capture chimpanzee, it’s still Robbie Williams through and through with a very human story about fame and the challenges that come with that. Not once did the chimp feel like a stylistic decision to make the biopic stand out, it legitimately served a purpose here. 

What more can I say? Better Man was a blast and joins Rocketman as one of my favorite music biopics. It’s weird and relentless while also very bold and thought-provoking, a perfect introduction to Robbie Williams if I do say so myself.