
Although I was initially unfamiliar with the pop icon Robbie Williams, his rise to fame is familiar. He had a dream of singing, blossomed into the member of a boy band, struggled with drugs, struggled with family, and inevitably fought his demons back to success. But what instantly stands out about his bio-pic, Better Man, is that he’s portrayed as a monkey. That’s a gimmick strong enough to garner the eyeballs, but keeping them glued to the screen would take some effort. Surprisingly, the monkey-man allure makes this film as compelling as it is visually interesting.
I think what immediately made me love this film is the commitment to framing Robbie Williams (motion-captured and voiced by Jonno Davies) as a monkey in a world of humans without pointing it out. While the rationale is later given for Robbie feeling unevolved, the symbolism and weirdness never become a part of the vocals. We get a decent framing of Robbie from childhood (where Carter J. Murphy portrays him) and how he wanted to impress his showbusiness dad (Steve Pemberton). As Robbie grows up into a handsome and singing monkey, he inevitably gets his first big break in the pop band Take That. Stylish musical numbers punctuate his rise to fame in dazzling displays of a monkey Williams dancing up an energetic storm, with vocals provided by Adam Tucker.
Director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) makes the most of this concept by only embracing the weirdness when it’s warranted. This is best showcased in trying to frame Robbie’s depression as a self-defeating battle of his own identity. Throughout the film, various versions of Robbie linger in the crowd, whispering loudly about how terrible he is at achieving his dream. This dread continues to build until there’s a grand explosion of CGI combat, where Robbie engages in a vicious war of the self as he slaughters all the other monkey Robbies clouding his mind. It’s only towards the end that he realizes how empty this experience becomes, making this CGI sequence far more than an exercise in stylish action. There’s a point to the carnage and an importance to the CGI, which is embraced more in moments of drug binging and car accidents. It’s trippy, but not for trippiness sake.
With a devotion to the oddness, there’s a certain magic performed on the audiences. After about an hour, even with the surreal psychological sequences, you stop looking at the singing monkey among humans. You start feeling for Robbie more as a person bound by temptation and tragedy. You feel for the concerns of his mother, Janet (Kate Mulvany), and the tragedy of his ailing grandmother, Betty (Alison Steadman). There’s greater nuance to the lack of presence of Robbie’s father that is never so simplified. The degrading relationships and exhaustion of constantly performing somehow comes across with a greater appeal when the subject is a CGI animal. Maybe it’s because humans seem to care more about animals than each other, or maybe it’s just a refreshing break from the usual musical bio-pics so focused on matching the mannerisms. However you view this angle, it works so well. And when the monkey effects becomes more than just a gimmick, all other components fall into place. The musical numbers, fast-paced editing, and British celebrity scene laced with the lush and lethargic all sing so beautifully with a thematically sound foundation.
Better Man succeeds at being a better biopic by embracing the visual splendor to get lost within its monkey staging. It was an aspect I felt was lacking from last year’s Piece By Piece, which hardly used its LEGO gimmick on top of a standard music documentary. Gracey goes out of his way to make his film’s visual effects more than just eye candy, more than just a spoonful of computer-generated sugar to make the familiar biography go down. The embracement of the oddness can felt for better telling this story of a pop star finding meaning, using the familiar motion-capture format for something grander than compositing, making this film far more than the simplistic label it’ll likely be given as the “monkey pop star movie.” That might seem strange to refer to a movie about Robbie Williams, but if it works, it works. And the monkey angle is more than enough to make Williams more of a memorable name instead of being confused with the American comedian.