Better Man (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
May 12
3 min read

BETTER MAN (2024)

Starring Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton, Alison Steadman, Kate Mulvany, Damon Herriman, Raechelle Banno, Jake Simmance, Liam Head, Jesse Hyde, Chase Vollenweider, Tom Budge, Leo Harvey-Elledge, Chris Gun, Frazer Hadfield, Leatham Blisand, Anthony Hayes and John O'May.

Screenplay by Simon Gleeson and Oliver Cole and Michael Gracey.

Directed by Michael Gracey.

Distributed by Paramount Pictures. 135 minutes. Rated R.

In the US, Robbie Williams seems like a somewhat odd choice for the subject of a biopic musical. Much like Amy Winehouse, another Brit singer who was also recently the subject of a film on her life, while he was huge internationally and always seemed to be on the cusp of superstardom in the US, he would mostly be looked at in this country as a one hit wonder for the song “Angels” – and even that song didn’t make the Billboard top 40.

He had a few other songs that got a bit of airplay here, a cover of World Party’s “She’s the One,” “Millennium” and duets with Kylie Minogue (“Kids”) and Nicole Kidman (a cover of Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s “Something Stupid”). He was also previously a member of a best-selling British pop boy band Take That, but even that group’s only big US hit single (“Back For Good”) was sung by Gary Barlow, one of the other band members.

In fact, if you look at his singles discography in Wikipedia, they don’t even bother putting up a column for US chart rankings, even though they have them for countries like Austria, The Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

However, much like Winehouse, even if he never really became huge in the United States, he was catnip for the gossip rags. Drugs, alcohol, partying, sex addiction, mindless destruction of houses and hotel rooms, bad relationships; there were very few vices on the rock star checklist that Williams didn’t embrace wholeheartedly. So, even if he never had a bunch of hits here, he certainly had a very dramatic life.

I missed the film when it had a short run in the theaters, although I am a music nerd and a fan of Williams’ career. Therefore it is nice to catch up with it now that it is being released on video. However, even while I originally wanted to see it on the big screen, one major aspect of the film concerned me.

The main gimmick of Better Man, the Robbie Williams jukebox movie musical by director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman), is that while Williams plays himself vocally, visually he is represented as a CGI-generated ape man.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Actor Jonno Davies does the motion-capture performance and some dialogue as well. But the character of Robbie Williams essentially looks like a man with a chimp face and hairy body throughout the film.

This eccentric visual choice is apparently because Williams has said that throughout his career he felt like a performing monkey. And, okay, that is a legitimate complaint and would make perfect sense for a dream sequence which lasts a scene or two. Doing it for the entirety of the film seems excessive and is sometimes – often – distracting from the story being told.

The fact that Better Man succeeds despite this odd storytelling quirk – in fact, it succeeds rather well – is pretty darned impressive.

As simian Robbie Williams openly acknowledges in the movie, sometimes it is not a matter of talent, sometimes it simply comes down to likability and cheekiness. And Robbie Williams is a very likable sort, even if he is depressive, self-doubting, and self-destructive. Time spent with him is generally rather fun.

Better Man follows the singer from his childhood as a little runt who idolizes the Rat Pack in an attempt to connect with his dismissive father, to being the youngest and most troublesome member of Take That to a self-destructive adult shooting for stardom. None of these things are all that unique in music biopics, but Better Man tells the story well.

Despite the whole monkey thing.

Jay S. Jacobs