Once in a millennium, I recommend spending one of your lazy days watching a biopic.
Biopics are hard. Music biopics are harder. Typically, both of these are my least favorite type of movie. So why was I so excited to see and review this particular movie? Because I love a new take on the formula, which this movie promised to do. I also love Robbie Williams’s music, so it seemed like a match made in movie heaven. Was it as strong a movie as expected?
If you’ve seen any details about this film or seen any trailers, you know that the main conceit of the project is that the film stars neither Robbie Williams (he narrates), nor actors playing him at different times in his life, bur rather he is represented by a CGI chimpanzee. Now you may be asking yourself, why would they replace him with a chimpanzee? I’ll dismiss the film’s reasons (Williams explains that he doesn’t see himself as fully evolved) and make my own guess, which is that it solves a big casting issue. How could you find someone who could capture the charisma and talent of a 21-year-old Robbie Williams?
I was convinced before I saw this film that this entire review would be asking why he was a chimpanzee, but after seeing this film, I both don’t know why, but more amazingly, I don’t care. The performance capture and visual effects are at an absolutely legendary level here. Yep, that’s a chimp and his human grandma. Yep, that’s a chimp dancing gloriously in the streets. Yep, that’s the chimp having a romantic meet-cute on a boat. Yep, and yep, and yep. It’s something beautiful.
The movie does have the basic framing of your typical music biopic. Boy has fraught relationship with his father, dreams of becoming a star, becomes a star, handles it poorly, finds redemption, heals relationships, learns lessons. Those parts are all here — there are no surprises in the story. You know all the beats before they happen. You can see them coming all the way from Knutsford City Limits.
The surprises and joys of this film are found in the visual style of the piece. There are musical numbers that absolutely leap off the screen, ones with intense visualizations of emotion, and ones that may have you in tears, when Robbie is truly singing for the lonely. The songs, for the most part, become montages of memories and emotions from Robbie’s life. Most of the songs in the film are sung by Robbie Williams himself, using new arrangements made just for the film. There may be one too many songs stripped down for added dramatic effect, but this would be splitting hairs. Many of the hits are here: “Feel,” “Rock DJ,” “Come Undone,” “Angels,” and of course “Better Man,” among several others. If you’re like me, you may want to sing along, but that would be rude–c’mon!
I’m not sure how this will play to American audiences who may not be familiar with the music or story of Robbie Williams. Some of the scenes here are drawn nearly exactly from famous bits of video from his life, and I think that may be lost on some people. Of course, vast amounts of dramatic license are taken with some of these scenes, including a supremely violent action scene that definitely isn’t on the What We Did Last Summer DVD. Big important scenes are simply flipped in time to meet the needs of the narrative. Multiple albums are lost to time for this wacky, also compressed timeline; Sing When You’re Winning provides the title song for the film, but is never even referenced in the movie.
When Better Man is in the midst of one of its musical numbers, it’s one of the most exciting and innovative films out there, and, for that, I can highly recommend it, despite the elements that drag it back into biopic territory. You win some, you lose some. I have no regrets seeing this. Let it entertain you!
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Better Man opens in theaters today.
