‘Better Man’ Review: Hey, Hey, He’s A Monkey | TIFF
Pop superstar Robbie Williams hasn’t exactly been a great person. He’ll even tell you that himself, as he does in the opening narration to Better Man, the new jukebox musical biopic about him from The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey. In his own words, Robbie Williams is a “narcissistic, punchable, shit-eating twat.” Hearing a biopic protagonist say that about themselves in the opening moments of their own film is bracing, but it’s just the beginning of this one. If that was too much for you, get ready, because not too long after that, Williams introduces the film’s main conceit, inviting the audience to see him as he sees himself: As a performing monkey. Yes, in Better Man, Robbie Williams is a photorealistic CGI monkey. One who, admittedly, mostly behaves exactly like a human, but still. A monkey. The metaphor couldn’t be more obvious, nor could the fact that this is the exact right thing for a biopic about the brash, cheeky Williams, the Britpop bad boy with a heart of gold.
A poor kid from working class Stoke-on-Trent, Williams always had the soul of a cabaret singer inside of him, due in no small part to his father Peter (Steve Pemberton)’s love of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. When Peter got the slightest whiff of a chance at the big time for himself, he left Robbie behind with his mother and grandmother, only returning for a brief appearance once Robbie gets signed to the boy band Take That, which goes on to become one of the most popular bands in British history. Take That, formed around the singing and songwriting talents of Gary Barlow (Jake Simmance), took the nation by storm, setting the record for most top ten singles by a group from one album, including four consecutive UK number ones, in 1993. As the youngest member of the group, Williams longed for more creative input, but since Barlow’s songs brought Take That enough worldwide acclaim to launch a world tour in 1995, they never gave him the chance. Young, eager to fill the hole his father left in his life, and dealing with a far more invasive form of fame than he ever imagined, Robbie began playing an exaggerated version of himself when performing with the group, turning to drugs and alcohol to help. This ruins his relationship with fiancée Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno) of the popular girl band All Saints and eventually leads to his ouster from Take That after a near overdose the night before their biggest performance to date. However, when he hooks up with songwriter/producer Guy Chambers (Tom Budge), Robbie’s solo career takes off, putting him on a collision course with his dream concert at Knebworth, which would be the largest music event in UK history. Will he make it through the concert in one piece, or will his inner saboteur take him down?
Gracey comes to this film with all the confidence of a man who directed one of the most popular movie musicals of all time. The film often feels like The Greatest Showman on steroids – the breathless romantic rush of “A Million Dreams” is dialed up to eleven for “She’s The One,” as Robbie and Nicole meet and fall in love with a shower of gold sparks surrounding them. Gracey and cinematographer Erik Wilson (the DP of the two Paddington films) know how to maximize the kineticism of Ashley Wallen’s choreography with camera movement, as when they stage the rising fame of Take That to “Rock DJ,” sending the cast and the audience on an audacious stitched-together single tracking shot trip through the wild nightlife of ‘90s England. It’s a show-stopper of a sequence that looks as unconvincing as any recent Marvel film in its glossily weightless visual effects but has such bold, “now have a look at THIS,” energy that it becomes more exciting to watch than any recent action film you can name. Gracey also knows when to dial back for the more intimate scenes, ensuring that Williams’s cheeky narration never takes us completely out of the emotion of the moment.
That tricky tonal line, while aided by Williams narrating his own story, isn’t exactly helped by the character of Robbie always looking like a monkey, though. The conceit makes its point early and often, and while it’s certainly fun to see a monkey done up in all of Williams’s different hairstyles, it’s a bit jarring that he’s also a monkey as a little boy, before he’s even started performing. By the time the film nears the two-hour mark, it becomes a bit numbing despite how believable Monkey Robbie looks. Okay, so Robbie Williams sees himself as a monkey – are you actually going to do anything with that other than the obvious? Far more interestingly, the film has previous versions of Monkey Robbie (Jonno Davies provides the motion capture performance, but the eyes apparently belong to the real Robbie) show up as hallucinations to mock and degrade Robbie, always ready and waiting to bring him down whenever he’s riding high. Just when you think the film has exhausted all it can out of its own central conceit well before it’s over, everything comes together in a stunningly bonkers, balls-to-the-wall sequence of CGI mayhem at the Knebworth concert. Bringing all of the film’s thematic ideas to a head, the sequence fits right in with the film’s bold, cheeky energy, but locks into something much darker about fame, the desire of the audience, and the desperation of performers to be loved.
Apart from the whole Monkey Robbie aspect, Better Man pretty much adheres to standard music biopic formula, because it’s a sad but true fact that Williams’s life hit all the standard rise-and-fall beats we’ve come to expect. Having Williams narrate the film adds several interesting layers, though, allowing him to make plenty of jokes at his own expense as well as own up to what a “narcissistic, punchable, shit-eating twat” he really was. Despite all the crazy monkey action, the film does yeoman’s work in bringing the superstar down to Earth, taking the piss out of every self-aggrandizing stunt Williams pulled in his life. Williams’s involvement in the project speaks volumes about the work he’s done since his younger days, presenting a warts-and-all vision of his life without ever begging for sympathy or making excuses. The film ends with the most cliché song and setting imaginable, but because of the chances the film has taken along the way, it works, managing to make us hear extremely familiar lyrics in a new way because of the context. Not everything in Better Man works flawlessly, but the power it accumulates by the end is completely singular, something that so many music biopics don’t even attempt to achieve.
Grade: B
This review is from the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Paramount Pictures will release Better Man only in theaters on Christmas Day.
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