✯✯½

Every awards season, there’s always at least a handful of biopics that take up slots because they’re such an easy sell. It’s often a very tired formula, but once in a while there come at least a handful of movies that try to shake up how we perceive such films. That’s where Better Man comes into play: for it’s a biopic about the British pop star Robbie Williams told in the most unorthodox manner. Rather than have him portrayed as a human being, you’re seeing a CGI monkey portraying Robbie Williams, while the entire cast are humans. Hearing about this was all I needed to know to want to see Better Man. Because I knew that whether this was good or bad, the CGI monkey alone made it something I wanted to see.

Telling the life story of Robbie Williams (portrayed by both himself and Jonno Davies in motion-capture) from his childhood to the peak of his fame, Better Man doesn’t really have much in the way of a story that’s all too different from music biopics. But from the first moment we see Robbie Williams as a child, the one thing that stands out is the fact that Williams is portrayed as a monkey. Because Williams also shows that he’s lived a lifestyle that would easily amount to a hard-R rating, it’d be easy enough to want to see this movie solely for the crazy things you can imagine that this monkey will do on screen. On that front, Better Man delivers everything you can hope for.

It becomes evident from the manner that Better Man presents itself, especially with the motion capture monkey in place of a human being where Robbie Williams would be, that it’s treating the entire idea as a joke. It’s a very funny one at that, especially in response to the fact that so many biopics in recent memory being made about musicians seem to follow a very familiar formula. Whether those films be Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman, there’s always a specified pattern by which these movies follow that seems to be effective at capturing the audience, going from the origins in the singer’s childhood to playing the eventual hits, or even indulging in the interpersonal relationships. The monkey at the center, not commented on by any of the characters, only makes it all feel like a joke – and it’s a very funny one.

Nonetheless, the most commendable thing about what Michael Gracey is bringing us out of Better Man are the musical numbers. Granted, this should be no surprise for those who knew what he brought to The Greatest Showman, yet it’s the ways in which songs like “Let Me Entertain You” and “Rock DJ” are presented that jump out especially. There’s so much life to be felt, which also is aided from how many of these songs were re-recorded for the film, so as to allow them to hit the emotional highs and lows of Williams’s tumultuous life.

Yet perhaps the monkey adds more of a novelty to the fact that Better Man isn’t really doing all that much different from a standard musician biopic. Which just as well might be fine, but it doesn’t establish Robbie Williams as someone who lived an interesting enough life to be covered on screen so simply. It’s all the same notes of biopics of famous musicians, except for the fact that it’s a monkey, which is noted by Michael Gracey to be an embodiment of how Williams sees himself when he’s performing a concert. But take that away, and you’re left with something very by-the-numbers.

Either way, the title Better Man feels fitting enough for a movie like this. Where musician biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody or Bob Marley: One Love have sanitized their subjects, Better Man shows Robbie Williams as a lunatic from the get go. That alone might be reason enough for the monkey on the screen, but one can’t prepare themselves for what they’re about to witness, given the fact that Michael Gracey is opting for a heavy R-rated portrait of Williams’s life: sex, drugs, rock and roll and all that.

Frankly, I think that it’s absolutely astonishing that a film like this even exists to begin with. Because we’ve seen biopics being done to death all through the years and sweeping up awards at the Oscars. So it only fits that someone like Robbie Williams comes in to show his life as a complete joke, ironically enough, the best kind of vanity project at that. Yet there’s not really enough going on underneath in order to reaffirm Robbie Williams’s place in your head if you didn’t already know who he was before seeing Better Man. It’s just hard to forget the monkey at the center of it, though.

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Watch the trailer right here.

All images via Paramount.

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Directed by Michael Gracey
Screenplay by Michael Gracey, Oliver Cole, Simon Gleeson
Produced by Craig McMahon, Paul Currie, Michael Gracey, Coco Xialu Ma
Starring Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton, Alison Steadman
Premiere Date: August 30, 2024 (Telluride)
Running Time: 134 minutes

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