“What’s with the monkey?” asks Robbie Williams in the trailer of Better Man, a movie based on his life. The film is in many respects a standard-issue music biopic, but the British pop singer is portrayed by a walking, talking CGI monkey — a chimpanzee, to be precise — throughout. It’s a good question: What is with that monkey? Well, its voice is provided by Williams himself while Jonno Davies provides its movements in a motion-capture suit. The audacious device accomplishes a number of things that help lift this movie above the dross that the multiplex so frequently gives us.
The movie starts with Robert Williams’ childhood growing up in Stoke-on-Trent, the ceramics capital of Britain. His Frank Sinatra-idolizing father (Steve Pemberton) leaves his family and his job as a cop to pursue his dream of becoming a lounge singer in London. Fired by that, 15-year-old Rob tries out for and becomes a member of the 1990s boy band Take That, where manager Nigel Martin-Smith (Damon Herriman) rechristens him as Robbie to play up his status as the youngest band member. Life is good for a while until Robbie’s bandmates kick him for his drug use and alcoholism. This does not make him sober up, but rather propels him to even greater stardom as a solo act.
Even more than Rocketman, this music biopic makes its subject out to be, as Williams describes himself, a “narcissistic, punchable, shit-eating twat.” It shows the press conference where he bragged about having sex with all of the Spice Girls and the awards show where he challenged Oasis’ Noel Gallagher to a boxing match. Robbie also acts like an absolute wanker when his wife Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno) scores a number one hit before he does as a member of the girl group All Saints. In his capacity as narrator, Williams says, “Lucky for me, Noel was out of the country at the time.” In fact, Williams is probably better as a narrator than he would be if he were portraying himself. About his sexuality, the man who once released an album entitled Swings Both Ways says, “All the boys I slept with said I was crap.”
The unquestioned musical highlight is when the movie depicts Take That’s initial rush of fame with Robbie, Nigel, and the other band members dancing down a packed Regent Street to “Rock DJ.” The song is out of place chronologically — Williams conceived the song years after he left Take That — but what of that? The monkey pulls some superhuman dance moves, including backflipping off the roof of a moving double decker bus. Australian director Michael Gracey previously did The Greatest Showman, and he films this massive dance number in a smooth single take, snaking in and out of buildings à la the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” video. It’s striking just how many people are casually injured by the proceedings, as Robbie boots a soccer ball into the face of a passer-by and the band litters the street with thousands of gumballs that cause the backup dancers to flail and trip while the guys execute barrel turns over the carnage. None of the other numbers approach this one’s exuberance, not Robbie and Nicole’s romantic duet on “She’s the One” or his rendition of “Angels” (the one Williams song that Americans might possibly know) as an elegy to his beloved grandma.
However, Robbie’s creeping imposter syndrome takes the form of other monkeys in his audience glaring at him with their arms folded, and it culminates in a spectacular scene during his 2003 performance at the Knebworth Festival, when the 750,000 fans at that event all turn into monkeys and he has to slaughter them in a medieval battle. Before that metaphor, the monkey version of Robbie shoots up heroin, calls out his dad for his abandonment, and has sex with groupies. (That last bit really should be weirder than it is.) I do wish the movie’s treatment of Williams’ substance abuse and mental health issues had run deeper, and I really wish he hadn’t announced his sobriety with a cover of “My Way,” a song I always found to be an exercise in chest-beating male self-pity even when Sinatra did it.
Even with that, the monkey makes Better Man into something I’d watch ten more times before I saw A Complete Unknown again, even though it’s about a much lesser musician. (I’m sure even Williams would agree with that assessment.) Turns out it’s easy being innovative with these music biopics. All they had to do was add a monkey.
Better Man
Starring Robbie Williams. Directed by Michael Gracey. Written by Simon Gleeson, Oliver Cole, and Michael Gracey. Rated R.
