From January 9, the musical biopic «Better Man» began screening in cinemas, which, as you might guess, is dedicated to the popular British performer Robbie Williams. A distinctive feature of the film is that the main character appears here as an anthropomorphic CGI chimpanzee. So in the review below, we will analyze what such a strange move looks like and whether the film will be interesting to viewers who are not ardent fans of the star’s work.
Genre biographical musical film
Director Michael Gracey
Starring Jonno Davies (motion capture), Robbie Williams (voice), Steve Pemberton, Kate Mulvany, Alison Steadman, Damon Herriman, Rachel Banno, Jake Simmons, Liam Ged, Jessie Hyde, Tom Badge
Premiere cinemas
Release Year 2025
Website IMDb
1982. In the traditionally gloomy English town of Stoke-on-Trent, eight-year-old chimpanzee Robert Williams plays street football with the boys, however, he demonstrates miserable skills as a goalkeeper. After the game, dirty and humiliated, he performs a singing home show with his father, who adores Frank Sinatra. And, it must be said, the boy sings significantly better than he plays football.
One day, Robert’s father goes to a football match that is to take place at the famous «Wembley» and never returns home. Therefore, the boy stays with his mother and grandmother, who has no doubt about her grandson’s talent and always supports him. Williams dreams of a music career and already in his teenage years heads to Manchester for an audition in the boy band «Take That». This will be the beginning of a great and, as it turns out, incredibly complex and thorny path to the Olympus of fame.
But there is also a downside to this cinema trend. First, the genre of biographical musical film does not allow for much maneuver in terms of dramaturgy, although this does not mean that breaking the mold here is impossible (just remember «Last Days» (2005) by Gus Van Sant or, for example, «Control» (2007) by Anton Corbijn). If we talk about costly mainstream, then they are unlikely to take risks and go beyond the typical genre tropes.
Second, the success of the project depends partly on the scale of the personality described and how interesting it is to today’s audience. Third, as with superhero films, or any other genre that has experienced massive popularity (such as action movies in the 90s), audiences simply get tired of the saturation of similar content.
The most radical way of departing from genre conventions was that director Michael Gracey, who directed «The Greatest Showman» (2017) and was an executive producer of «Rocketman» (2019), refused to cast an actor for the title role and, guided by statements from Williams himself, turned the main character into a monkey. If the acting of Rami Malek or Austin Butler played a crucial role in the films about Freddie Mercury and Elvis Presley respectively, here there is nothing similar at all.
And how are you supposed to rate this? That is, such a bold yet ambiguous move can only be perceived from the position of subjective feelings and no other way.
This is while assuming that Robbie Williams’ personality or at least his work must be interesting to you, because a neutral viewer (which is the author of these lines, consider this) gets a film about a crazy chimpanzee, which mostly does all sorts of wild things. Watching this is not exactly a great pleasure. In a way, we act like psychotherapists to whom the main character confesses. So, involvement in the narrative will depend on who Robbie Williams is for you.
So who is he, really? A rebel? A classic bad boy? An incredibly lucky impostor? What really impresses in «Better Man», apart from the bright, well-staged and thrilling musical numbers with hits from the performer («Supreme», however, is not included), is the frankness of Williams, who was also involved in making the film. Here, no one will cowardly look away from the most controversial or even shameful moments. The viewer is offered a look into the most unattractive backstage life of a British superstar. And this deserves at least respect.
But if you disregard such extreme honesty, as well as the presence of a digital monkey in the frame, «Better Man» is little different from the standard musical biopic.
Ups and downs, laughter and tears, victories and defeats, childhood trauma and a cocaine paradise — it’s never happened to anyone before, and here it is again. Not you, Robbie, the first, not you the last. Perhaps here we have more sentimentality than usual, and it is this that can evoke a response in a concerned viewer, especially in the finale. But you need to be truly concerned, rooting for the underdog.
The film is filled with globally famous hits and fiery dances. Here and there, a monkey jumps around, pushing the action to the brink of a circus show. In the frame, performances by young members of Take That flicker (about whose fresh album we, by the way, wrote in the relevant material, when we were still reviewing musical news). As a musical, it works well.
Williams fans will also be delighted by references to his work, particularly the image from the «Rock DJ» (2000) video, which resembles the bloody horrors of Clive Barker more than a pop performer’s work intended for rotation on a hypothetical MTV.
Elton John called him «the Frank Sinatra of the 21st century». The sales volumes of his albums have reached the mark of 75 million copies. He is a record-holder of the «Brit Awards». He is indeed an extraordinary and significant figure. And if you find him interesting — it is worth seeing on the big screen. If not, the promised «let me entertain you» might just remain an empty sound.