The Simian Better Man Is a Pleasant Evolution of the Musical Biopic

In a post-Walk Hard world, it’s good that many biopics of creative individuals are taking chances and messing around with the form. Sure, masterpieces like All That Jazz demonstrated decades ago what wild experimentation and an acute mode of storytelling could accomplish far from the more banal, hagiographic celebrations of a given artist, but in this century there’s still plenty worthy of celebration for their own attempts to mess things about.

Rocketman, the sublime version of the Elton John story told from the perspective of a recovering addict and his flawed memories of the past, seems to have opened the doors for others to make similarly bold moves for contemporary audiences. In 2024 we’ve already seen Pharell’s tale told via the mode of an animated Lego movie. This made for a wild, experimental, yet immensely delightful collision of form and content titled Piece by Piece that under the careful direction of Music doc legend Morgan Neville elevates the otherwise linear tale of success to a visual triumph.

And then there’s Better Man, the semi-truthful, mostly biographical story of Robbie Williams. Directed by Michael Gracey, whose The Greatest Showman is one of the best contemporary film musicals to truly enter the canon, the film quite literally monkeys around with the truth. For rather than just aping the checkbox events of William’s decades-long career, we see the singer portrayed in simian form, a chimp-like figure with a chip on his shoulder and a dream for grand success. Stripped away from this highly effective and boldly inventive mode of retelling, it’s likely that the story would be just one among many other similar storylines following a boorish, drug addled drunkard discomfited by his success and drowning his sorrows in excess. To its immense credit, Better Man in almost every mode tries to get past these trappings and into deeper, and thus all the more accessible, issues of mental health, self-destruction, and more.

Williams’ rise from precocious teen member of a boyband, through to his solo success and tabloid fascination, all whilst battling serious addiction and mental health issues, provides the more linearized elements of the story. Yet it’s the film’s flights of fancy, from grand musical theatre sequence to unapologetic cabaret-style grandiosity that elevates things from mere quotidian concerns about a sad millionaire with daddy issues to something far more delightfully cinematic.

What’s somewhat odd for North American audiences, and something that may well be a total shock to many in the U.K., is that at best Williams is considered a one hit wonder, if at all. As the film culminates with a Knebworth concert, wrapping some 125,000 in attendance around his finger, it’s the fellow headliners Oasis and others that on this side of the pond were the dominant exports from that era of so-called Britpop in which neither artist comfortably fits. Where Queen and Elton John, for example, truly were a global superstars that very much are beloved both in the U.K. and over here, Williams burns far less bright in North America than on his native soil.

That’s not to say that his story is undeserving, it just makes it a bit strange for those outside his bubble to truly grasp just how bloody huge he was during his peak. Although “Angels” from his 1997 record peaked at number 53 on the U.S. charts some two years after its release in Britain, legendary anthems like “Let Me Entertain You” made barely a mark over here. As for his time in Take That, the boyband craze that took the U.K. by storm barely made a blip, while the likes of The Spice Girls could still fill stadia 30 years on, generated a Hollywood film, and paved the way for the likes of Brittany Spears, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift and others, but equally for the global fascination with the K-Pop and J-Pop bands that fuel millions of fans.

So although it takes a bit of a leap even for the musically conscious to simply accept that, yes, Williams was, and still is, a really, really big star in the U.K., it does make some of the braggadocio moments feel oddly provincial when seen outside of the milieu of his success. Of course, much of the point of the film is to point out over and over that such grandiosity and douchebaggery that Robbie exhibited was merely a mask behind which a scared little boy with a penchant for the cabaret stylings of crooners hid, it still feels strangely discombobulating to try and connect from afar to that level of fandom, with the fascination of his travails less earned from the outside than perhaps other legendary artists have accrued.

Williams serves as the narrator throughout, and re-recorded many of his songs to fit within the emotional and narrative context of the storyline. As is often the case, many storylines are shifted around for convenience or downright softened, making even his most boorish of behaviors come across as charismatic and deserving of empathy, even if in actually they may have been slightly more destructive and barbaric. Jonno Davies provides the motion capture, and it’s an enormous credit to both his exceptional physicality and the army of boffins at Weta Workshop (the same VFX company that brought the latest Planet of the Apes films to life) that the chimp shtick never gets in the way of expressing the deep emotionality that much of the film expresses.

In fact, after a while you almost forget that you’re watching a mo-cap animated figure, another level of suspended disbelief that gives the film much of its power. Even for the uninitiated the tunes prove to be well presented and peppered in ways that drive the narrative forward, and everything from grand dance sequences to moments cuddling on a couch are done in convincing and effective ways.

Although Better Man suffers a bit from repetition, the glimpses into the audience of the performer’s own reflected past but one example that’s played out far too many times, there’s still a lot to love about this telling. Much of this has to do with both the committed performances and the rigorous direction by Gracey, assuring that even the most bombastic elements are grounded, and even the most chimpanzee-like antics illustrate a deeper humanity. It’s this deft collision between the fantasy and the reality of this popstar’s life that fuels this telling, and if nothing else there’s never a time where it feels like the kind of gormless celebrity worship that Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping so deliciously parodied.

As audience members we are left at the end not really knowing if indeed Robbie Williams is to this day a decent human being, making the film feel at once a confessional and perhaps a convenient excuse for all that transpired. Still, the film makes a pretty good argument that he is indeed a Better Man, at least in contrast to his hellion-like behavior at the height of his success where he almost destroyed his career, was unfaithful to those closest to him, and betrayed both his family and friends. From a man who pleaded to the crowds that we let him entertain us, that is more than enough.

Director: Michael Gracey
Writer: Simon Gleeson, Oliver Cole, Michael Gracey
Starring: Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton, Alison Steadman
Release Date: Jan. 10, 2025

Jason Gorber is a Toronto based film Critic and Journalist, Editor-in-Chief at That Shelf, the movie critic for CBC’s Metro Morning, and others. He is a member of the Toronto Film Critics Association and voter for the Critics Choice Awards Association. He also knows for a fact that CASINO is Scorsese’s masterpiece, and has a cat named Zissou.