Imagine the scene. You have decided to make a film about the early life and career of Robbie Williams. You are pitching the idea of the troubled singer to studio executives, and you are going through the motions of the story, but you leave the most critical part till last. You don’t want Robbie to star in the movie or even have another actor play him. You want him to be a body-capture CGI chimpanzee. I wonder what the reaction was like. Everyone seems to be scratching their heads about why, but Better Man, the Robbie Williams story is centred around the singer as a monkey. And it works.

Robert Williams was brought up in Stoke and looked upon as a loser or nobody. Living with his father, mother, and Nan, the family is suddenly torn apart when his father leaves to seek his dream of being an entertainer, performing to small crowds at a holiday camp. Desperate for his own fame, Robert goes to an audition for a new boy band and, surprisingly, gets in. His manager changes his name to Robbie, and it soon becomes apparent that he is just a performing monkey to the group’s lead, Gary Barlow. However, Robbie wants more, and the determination to be a star pushes him into a world of self-destruction.

It’s not a secret that Robbie Williams has had a career that could have ended with the amount of drink and drugs the man took. What is surprising about Michael Gracey’s film is how bleak it is. This is not the shiny, all-singing, all-dancing musical you think it will be. Taking its lead from the Elton John fantasy biopic Rocketman, this is a warts-and-all fantasy tale with elements of the truth thrown in for good measure. Gracey, who directed The Greatest Showman, knows how to make the musical numbers work, and they are spectacular. Noneso than the Rock DJ moment, when Take That has hit the big time and a large number set in Piccadilly explodes onto the screen and makes the hairs on your neck stand to attention.

This isn’t a film just interested in fancy footwork and great vocals, all songs by Williams but re-imagined with new orchestration. This is a story of a man lost in the wilderness, wanting fame and fortune but not coping with it. This man was built up by his wayward father, only to be abandoned and longing for the support he needed. This is the story of how people who make it in music struggle with reality and with the issues that the real world presents. Gracey has delivered a tale that, at first, comes across as self-pity but eventually makes you question the decisions we all make in our lives because we think it will make us better people.

Williams has always been the cheeky chappy. That is the persona he created for himself, and it’s the one that has made him who he is. As he says in the film, Robbie was a character he could hide behind. The truth is that when someone with his drive is let loose without guidance, he is like a ticking timebomb. While Rocketman may have shown Elton John’s faults, this doesn’t hide from Williams’s egotistic attitudes. How he hurt so many people to get where he wanted, from Nicole Appleton, in one of the more shocking moments of the film, to showing no empathy to his best friend.

As for the whole film with Williams as an ape starts off a little jarring, but after a few moments, you forget, and you accept it, as do everyone else. A Planet of the Apes battle scene at Knebworth, where Williams takes on his previous incarnation, is the only time you notice that apes are all around, but otherwise, it works well.

The performances are strong, with the always fabulous Alison Steadman on heart-tugging duties as his Nan and Steve Pemberton, from Inside No. 9 and League of Gentlemen, is on superb form as his father. This man looks like a second-rate performer and yet is perfectly sleazy and vile at the same time. As for Williams himself, he narrates the whole film with Jonno Davies as screen Williams, and he captures the man extremely well.

Better Man is a surprise. A surprise at how dark the film is, while there are moments of pure cinematic brilliance. A surprise that Williams came out of this all intact. More importantly, it is a surprise that a monkey could evoke so much emotion that tears are running down their face by the end. It’s not as good as Rocketman, but it’s a close second place.

4 out of 5

Director: Michael Gracey

Starring: Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton, Alison Steadman, Kate Mulvany, Frazer Hadfield, Damon Herriman, Raechelle Banno

Written by: Simon Gleeson, Oliver Cole and Michael Gracey

Running Time: 134 mins

Cert: 15

Release date: 26th December 2024