If Superman made us believe a man can fly, then Better Man makes us believe a CGI chimp can convincingly convey the agony and ecstasy of pop star Robbie Williams. Initially, it reads as little more than a self-deprecating joke – when The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey first spoke to Williams about putting his life up on screen, the latter remarked that he’d always seen himself as a kind of “performing monkey”. But it works. Not despite the gimmick, but because of it.
Williams was, to quote the film, the “cheeky little bastard” of Nineties boy band Take That, with an instinctive hunger for attention. His split from the group to become a solo act in 1996 pushed him only further into the showman role, while his rocky personal life became steady fodder for the tabloids, who liked to point and leer at a celebrity they’d deemed as nothing more than an indulgent mess. The singing of CGI chimp Williams is done by the man himself, but he’s otherwise brought to life by actor Jonno Davies via mo-cap (motion capture) magic and the talented digital effects artists at Wētā FX, who have collectively spent so much time animating primates for the recent Planet of the Apes film series that it must be second nature to them now.
