Better Man (TIFF) Review: Robbie Williams played by a CGI Chimp?

PLOT: The life of international pop star Robbie Williams, from his early days as a member of Take That to his breakthrough as a solo artist and his struggles with addiction.

REVIEW: There’s one way that Better Man is completely different from any music-based biopic you’ve ever seen. The director, Michael Gracey, depicts Robbie Williams as a CGI chimpanzee, with cutting-edge VFX from WETA, with actor Jonno Davies playing him in a mo-cap performance (although they use Williams’s distinctive eyes). The singer himself provides the narration. It’s risky and a big swing, but here’s the thing. The craziest thing about Better Man isn’t the fact that Robbie Williams is presented as a CGI chimpanzee but rather that this risky conceit works quite well.

Here’s the thing – when an iconic person is impersonated in a biopic, we get caught up over various surface-level things, with the biggest being whether or not the actor looks like the person they’re playing. By having Williams represented as a monkey, you get over that aspect much quicker than you would otherwise. Strangely, it helps you invest more in the character.

It’s an inspired choice for Gracey, who has a comprehensive background in VFX and directed one of the more popular recent musicals, The Greatest Showman. It also may help the movie attract a larger North American audience than it would otherwise. Despite being a European household name, Robbie Williams is still largely unknown in the United States.

This all adds up to a highly unique musical biopic that tells a story many readers of this site may not be familiar with. The movie charts Williams’s rise to fame, with him initially the bad boy in a band called Take That, which was gigantic in the nineties all throughout Europe. He was a household name, but as the movie shows, he was kicked out due to his growing substance abuse issues and tensions with the rest of the group. He re-emerged as a solo artist, with his fame eventually dwarfing that of the group he left, but his demons did not let up on him as he continued to struggle mightily with addiction.

The film depicts Williams’s life in a pretty unsparring way, with him often coming off as a brat burning bridges relentlessly. Yet, the film also has empathy for the fact that his greatest enemy was himself, visualizing his demons as other versions of himself mock him from the audience. 

Gracey depicts this all in a bold, energetic way. The movie climaxes with a major action sequence where Williams literally battles different versions of himself in a moment I didn’t see coming. Through it all, Gracey often dazzles the audience with set pieces, such as an amazing musical number where Williams and the rest of Take Take dance down Regent Street performing “Rock DJ.”

Gracey throws in everything but the kitchen sink to entertain his audience. While Williams may not be so well known in North America, the movie does feel like it has the potential to be a solid hit, even if the hard-R rating may keep it from the audience that made The Greatest Showman such a hit. Then again, given Williams’s struggles, could you do a watered-down PG-13 version? Who’d want to see that? 

While the visual spectacle aspect of the movie will probably be what sells this as a potential blockbuster, it also has a lot of heart, with a lot of it revolving around his fractured relationship with his father, played here by Steve Pemberton, who’s a frustrated, wannabe performer who imparts his love of showbiz on Robbie. 

While I went into Better Man with a raised eyebrow, wary of the chimpanzee aspect, to my delight, it worked wonderfully. As far as big-screen biopics go, this is a pretty deliriously entertaining one, and I had a blast watching it. It’s definitely one to keep an eye out for. 

Robbie Williams

AMAZING

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