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.
The film’s script by Gracey, Simon Gleeson, and Oliver Cole is the standard deal: a jukebox musical rise, fall, resurrection, and inspirational resolution. Because of Williams’s close involvement, it’s married entirely to his own read on his life, which is psychoanalytically straightforward but sturdy: his negligent father Peter (Steve Pemberton) had thwarted ambitions of stardom, and revered the likes of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, and Dean Martin – so little Robert Williams totalled his own life purely so he could “feel real love” from his pa, just like he sings about.
But what distinguishes Williams’s contributions to the musician-approved biopic genre, even more so than 2019’s refreshingly honest Rocketman (about Elton John, and originally slated to be directed by Gracey who ended up being executive producer), is his total disinterest in self-mythology. His smooth vocals, his stage presence, the forceful vulnerability of his songs – they all speak for themselves, and Williams is well aware of the magnitude of his 2003 record-breaking run at Knebworth Festival. But there’s not a lick of destiny to Better Man. As he tells us, in his narration, “my DNA is cabaret”. He’s here only to “give you a right f***ing entertaining”.
And The Greatest Showman was such an inflated cultural hit that it’s easy to forget that, beyond its utterly bizarre story, Gracey knows how to direct the hell out of a musical number. For “Rock DJ”, chimp Williams and the rest of Take That saunter in and out of Regent Street’s storefronts, jumping onto grand pianos and dancing alongside a fleet of mobility scooters. Williams’s internal demons are literalised as tooth-bearing, snarling past selves, who he will eventually have to defeat in battle. It’s all a bit mad, made madder by the fact it’s performed by a CGI chimp.
Yet the unexpected advantage here is that, when Williams wants to be truly upfront about his struggles, that veneer of fantasy shields us from the more harrowing details of his life, so that we can confront them yet still enjoy that “right f***ing entertaining”. Better Man is an unvarnished look at drug addiction. It’s an unvarnished look at his self-sabotaged relationship with All Saints singer Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno). It’s an unvarnished look at what it’s like to be hooked up to some mechanical ab toner, furiously insisting that you actually got everything you’ve ever wanted in life. Turns out, it’s a little easier to cope with the hard facts of it all when they’re being relayed by an ape in a suit.
Dir: Michael Gracey. Starring: Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton, Alison Steadman, Raechelle Banno. Cert 15, 135 mins.
‘Better Man’ is in cinemas from 26 December
