This time last year, few would have expected that we’d spend the end of 2024 relitigating Robbie Williams. But the release of Better Man has riled a very online segment of the American public. If we assume that TikTok is a halfway decent barometer of Gen-Z/Alpha thinking, lots of people are galled at the idea that we should know, or care, who Robbie Williams is. The resentment and defensiveness would take a master’s thesis to fully untangle, but it touches on American exceptionalism ( “we define pop culture, not Brits”); incuriosity in the age of Google (“anything worth knowing about, I already know”); cultural lag time (listeners being exposed to 25-year-old songs as if they were brand new); the very different roots of popular music in the U.S. vs. the UK (to oversimplify, Delta Blues vs. music hall performance); and, perhaps above all, a distrust of irony. In this country, we tend to prefer that our pop artists are sincere, because we are so often afraid of being laughed at. “Cringe” is something the other guy is, not us,
The real irony in all this is that the online haters and angry defenders are providing free publicity for the American release of a big-budget biopic about a pop star whose biggest U.S. single, “Angels,” peaked at #53. By the time Better Man and its associated junkets and interviews have blown through town, Robbie Williams’s profile will have been permanently raised over here. Was this an organic outgrowth of online behavior, or part of a grand design? And are such distinctions even possible anymore?
In any case, Better Man is a strange film, and only in part because of its subject. Williams and director Michael Gracey (The Biggest Showman) have tackled a problem that too few people have even considered. How does one make a pop music biopic after Walk Hard? That film razed the genre to the ground and salted the earth, and in so doing displayed just exactly how inflexible its narrative beats tend to be. Troubled childhood, discovery of a spark of talent, hustling for fame, meteoric rise, exposure of demons, drugs and alcohol, near fatal collapse, demons faced, rise from the ashes, triumph.
Better Man follows this roadmap almost to the letter. Aside from some snide, self-deprecating voiceover commentary from Williams, and much more competent direction and editing, the film is largely indistinguishable from Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocket Man, Gainsbourg: a Heroic Life, Walk the Line, or indeed, Walk Hard. Well, okay, there is one significant difference. From beginning to end, Robbie Williams is portrayed by a CGI chimpanzee. This leads to two inevitable, intertwined questions. Why? And is this enough to counterbalance Better Man’s grindingly conventional structure?
The second question is easier to answer. The chimp factor does go quite a ways toward making Better Man more watchable, and moderately more interesting. Like many Brechtian devices, Chimp-Robbie eventually naturalizes itself, so that at certain unexpected moments, like Robbie’s courtship of All Saints singer Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno), or presiding over the funeral of his beloved grandmother (Alison Steadman), you suddenly snap to attention and recognize anew, hey, that’s a digital chimp. Also, there are specific moments in the film, such as Williams’ drug-fueled tantrums of self-hatred, when Gracey breaks with the anthropomorphic conceit and Williams starts lurching around like an angry lower primate. This suggests that Williams, ever willing to take the piss out of his image, sees “Robbie” at his truest as roughly equivalent to “Robbie” at his absolute worst.
So yes, it’s a gimmick, but it somehow makes poignant points without dominating the entire film. But this leads us back to the first question. Why was it creatively necessary to depict Robbie Williams as a chimp? In interviews, Williams has said that it was a way to convey his sense of being “less evolved” than other people. Fair enough. And inevitably, the image of a chimp trying to do boy band dance numbers alongside the other members of Take That conjures a pretty clear metaphor for fame and control. (“Look at that poor performing chimp.”) But there’s a nagging sense that once this dominant idea was in place, the makers of Better Man called it a day, secure that their artistic heavy-lifting was over. Taken as a standard music biopic, Better Man has standout moments, such as the big dance number in Piccadilly Circus as Williams brachiates his way through “Rock DJ,” or the painful reckoning between Robbie and Nicole regarding her decision to have an abortion.
But none of this can fully compensate for the fact that Better Man strictly follows a rise-and-fall-and-resurrection path that we’ve seen charted by dozens of biopics about dozens of musicians. This goes to the heart of the online protests of American filmgoers. If you don’t already care about Robbie Williams (or know who he is), why should you join him on this well-worn journey? (Never mind the fact that the U.S. release of Better Man is undoubtedly the result of Gracey’s contract stipulating global theatrical, something he could demand because The Greatest Showman made a gazillion dollars worldwide.) Given the opportunity this film offered all concerned, it’s hard not to wish its makers had swung for the fences, instead of just from branch to branch. Nevertheless, if you’re curious about who Robbie Williams is and what his music sounds like, Better Man is certainly worth a look. His shit is bananas.
DIRECTOR: Michael Gracey; CAST: Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Damon Herriman, Steve Pemberton; DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount Pictures; IN THEATERS: December 25; RUNTIME: December 5
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