I feel sorry for anyone who goes into Better Man cold.
Adventurous moviegoers who want to take in a rock ’n’ roll biopic (especially those who just got through seeing Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan for A Complete Unknown’s two-and-a-half hours) will most likely find themselves befuddled all to hell while watching this. Not only does it give us a fantastical account of Brit-pop prince Robbie Williams’ ascent to superstar status, but it also portrays Williams as a chimpanzee. I’m also quite certain many viewers will get stuck trying to figure out who the fuck is Robbie Williams. (You might want to take in Robbie Williams, the four-part docuseries Netflix dropped in 2023, before taking this on.)
Williams is a particularly fascinating pop star, in that he’s very famous all over the world — except in America. I remember when he tried to reach stateside audiences in the late ’90s and early 2000s, when boy bands and those who did time in boy bands (like Menudo alumnus turned Latin megastar Ricky Martin) were all over the charts. This movie doesn’t even get into how Williams, a former bratty member of the British boy band Take That before he became an even brattier solo artist, struck out with the Yanks. (The lack of recognition around these parts may explain why he used to live in L.A. with his wife and kids.)
Williams giving himself a primate makeover certainly adds more confusion to the mix. The movie never really stops to explain why Williams (played here by English actor Jonno Davies in a motion-capture performance) is literally monkeying around throughout this thing. Eventually, you get the idea that Williams (who provides cheeky voice-over narration) is basically a rock ’n’ roll animal, relentlessly entertaining the masses even though he at one point refers to himself as “unevolved.”
Star Timothée Chalamet visits Nashville to discuss Bob Dylan biopic, which opens wide on Christmas Day
Williams hooks up with The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey in creating a fact-based fantasia filled with boisterously staged, CGI-enhanced musical numbers set to Williams’ biggest hits. (It’s like Williams saw Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman and went into hold-my-beer mode.) They’re rousing and elaborate enough to almost make you forgive the story, scripted by Gracey, Australian actor-singer Simon Gleeson and Oliver Cole, which hits us with the familiar biopic beats.
We see Williams rising out of the working-class gutter, seeking fame and fortune but mostly craving the attention he doesn’t get from his dad (Steve Pemberton), who left his family to be a middling lounge singer. We also have Williams going through a rocky romance with Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno) from the all-girl group All Saints, which serves as a composite of all the high-profile relationships Williams had over the years. (He also had a dalliance with former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell.)
As Williams achieves A-list success, he predictably slides into drug-fueled excess, dulling the pain of being lonely (he appears to have only one true friend throughout the film) and unfulfilled while also being haunted by versions of himself, watching in disapproval from the audience. One insane sequence has Williams battling throngs of these imaginary Robbies during a mammoth outdoor show. And of course, there’s the thing that truly drives him off the deep end: the third-act death of a beloved family member.
As far as rock biopics go, Better Man is visually audacious but shamelessly routine. Its CGI wizardry can’t cover up the fact that we’ve seen this story oodles of times before. Yet it has a spirited, divisive attitude (much like Williams) that will either win you over or have you continuously asking yourself, “What the fuck was that?” on the ride home.
As I walked out of the screening I attended, I saw a woman in her seat either laughing or crying. Was she so baffled by what she just witnessed that she started having the giggles, or did the movie’s sentimentality get the waterworks going? Or was it both?
I’ll tell you this: You certainly won’t have that kind of response after watching A Complete Unknown.
