Director – Michael Gracey, Screenplay – Oliver Cole, Simon Gleeson & Michael Gracey, Producers – Paul Currie, Jules Daly, Michael Gracey, Coco Xiaoulu Ma & Craig McMahon, Photography – Erik A. Wilson, Music – Batu Sener, Visual Effects Supervisor – Luke Millar, Visual Effects – Plural (Supervisor – Juan Robertson), Studio Blackbird (Supervisors – Wil Manning & Nick Ponzoni), Rising Sun Pictures (Supervisor – Jamie MacDougall) & Weta FX Ltd (Sequence Supervisors – Keith Herft & Tim Walker), Production Design – Joel Chang, Choreography – Asley Wallen. Production Company – Lost Bandits/Footloose Productions/Azure Centrum/RPW Productions/Partizan Films/Vicscreen.
Cast
Robbie Williams & Jonno Davies (Robbie Williams), Steve Pemberton (Peter Williams/Conway), Alison Steadman (Betty Williams), Kate Mulvany (Janet Williams), Raechelle Banno (Nicole Appleton), Damon Herriman (Nigel Martin Smith), Frazer Hadfield (Nate), Tom Budge (Guy Chambers), Jake Simmance (Gary Barlow), Liam Head (Howard Donald), Chase Vollenweider (Jason Orange), Jesse Hyde (Mark Owen), Anthony Hayes (Chris Biggs), John Waters (Michael Parkinson), Lewo Harvey-Elledge (Liam Gallagher), Chris Gun (Noel Gallagher)
Plot
Singer/songwriter Robbie Williams tells his life story. Raised in Stoke-on-Trent, Robbie gained a love of performing at a young age, singing along to Sinatra and others with his father in front of the tv. At age sixteen, Robbie joined the boyband Take That and gained massive stardom. However, Robbie’s considerable drug use ended up with him being dropped by the rest of the band. Robbie went out on his own, determined to fulfil his dream of playing at Knebworth Stadium. As he started to gain huge popularity, his drug usage and insecurities ended up getting in the way.
There have been plentiful rock biopics before – Sid and Nancy (1986), Great Balls of Fire (1989), The Doors (1991), What’s Love Got to Do With It (1993), Ray (2004), Control (2007) and several Elvis films. In recent years, there have been the hits of Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), Rocketman (2019) and A Complete Unknown (2024) to tv works such as The Dirt (2019) and Pistol (2022). We now seem to have entered into the era of what could be termed the gonzo rock biopic. The first of these would be Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There (2007) where six actors (including one woman) played Bob Dylan. More recently, there was Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022), which basically made a whole bunch of stuff up because it was a more entertaining story, and then Piece By Piece (2024), which told the life of Pharrell Williams as a Lego film (which I suppose I should watch but for the fact I can’t stand Pharrell and his music).
I am not a fan of Robbie Williams and his music either. (In terms of this era he comes from, cast me more in the camp of Oasis – both the brothers Gallagher are portrayed as supporting characters here, although one scene we surprisingly enough don’t get is where Robbie’s girlfriend Nicole Appleton eloped with and married Liam). Better Man covers Robbie’s career from joining the boy band Take That at age sixteen in 1990, his being dumped by the band in 1995 and then his launching a massively successful solo career in 1996, which has produced twelve studio albums (including a Christmas album), one live album and ten compilation albums up to the point of the film’s release. He also holds the record for the most concert tickets sold in one day and more Brit Awards than any other musical artist.
The bizarre conceit that Better Man has is to tell Robbie Williams’ life story with he being portrayed as a CGI ape. It is a real scratch your head WTF idea – the rock biopic by way one of the Planet of the Apes reboot films. I suspect there were a variety of reasons that went into this. One of these might be that Robbie Williams is such a cocky, lively presence that trying to find an actor who could step into his shoes and believably play that is a big ask. The only real one we are ever given by the film is Williams’ own voiceover narration “I wanna show you how I really see myself.”
Robbie Williams as an apeThe ape Robbie Williams in concert
It is a bizarre notion, but I was happy to go with it. And it is not far into Better Man when the results prove surprisingly conducive. I watched Better Man back-to-back with Paddington in Peru (2024), which was released theatrically about a month earlier. Both seem surprisingly similar films – where a young talking animal lives in modern-day Britain and interacts with other people who regard the idea of such a talking animal character as perfectly normal. The idea of Robbie as an ape is not one that anybody in the film ever seems to comment on. You suspect if all of this were played out with an actual flesh and blood actor, Better Man would be far less the film than it is. However, watching the CGI animation of the ape Robbie’s face makes the character seem to express far more of the anguish, anger and feelings than you would get on a flesh-and-blood actor’s face.
On a story level, Better Man follows the predictable arc of a rock biopic – the young star’s rise from a young wannabe bursting with ambition; the initial breaks; the groupies, the drugs and alcohol – lots of drugs in fact; the heights of superstardom and then the realisation that he has discarded people from his former life; the mea culpa of entering rehab. Some of Robbie’s story is curtailed in order to give the film its big dramatic highs. Take That is depicted as the nadir of Robbie’s career but what is not mentioned is how he reunited with them in 2010. Oddly, we get depiction of his relationship with Nicole Appleton and her kicking him out, but no mention of Robbie’s wife Ayda Field whom he married in 2010.
Before this, Australian-born director Michael Gracey previously worked in visual effects and then began directing music video, before making the musical The Greatest Showman (2017). Gracey gives Better Man an incredibly vibrant life. This is a film that is not concerned with a realist telling of events and will happily skip off into the fantastical – Robbie’s big dream concert at Knebworth segues into a violent Planet of the Apes styled war between apes in the midst of the crowd, for instance. Gracey stages sensational pieces of choreography – a Take That performance bursting with energy as it weaves in and out of a London street; or the duet and meeting with Nicole (Raechelle Banno) with the two dancing around a marina deck that blurs in and out of the arc of their relationship.
It is this unique approach and the vitality of Gracey’s direction that makes Better Man work as well as it does. In fact, it is a far better and more enjoyable film than anything I expected it to be going into it (and that’s taking into account my lack of enthusiasm for Robbie’s music).
