Better Man

It feels as though the makers of Better Man anticipated moviegoers asking, “Another musician biopic?!” in reaction to their project arriving at the end of a year that gave us movies dramatizing the lives and careers of Bob Marley, Amy Winehouse, Pharrell Williams, Maria Callas and Bob Dylan. To that end, this musician biopic has something none of the others do: an anthropomorphic chimpanzee as lead character.

You couldn’t tell that from the synopsis that was circulating all year round which was “a film about the unlikely rise of singer-songwriter Robbie Williams.” Which it is, but with the part of Williams performed by some high-quality computer animation.

Once you get over that surprising creative decision, which is somehow never addressed in the film itself, you’ll come to see it serves Better Man quite well. For one thing, the standard biopic has simply become too familiar over time. With its chimp protagonist, Better Man does something that makes it instantly stand out from the pack.

The other thing that bold decision does is prioritize storytelling over performance. Musician biopics demand an actor who looks and sounds the part as well as having the dramatic weight and X factor we expect of a musician who’s successful enough to warrant a biopic. Occasionally, we get such a powerhouse performance: Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash, Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan. That is as clear a path as any to the Academy Awards and we’ve even seen Rami Malek lip-sync his way to an Oscar win largely just out of enduring love for Freddie Mercury. That very nature often redirects our attention away from the story being told and over to “wow, didn’t they do a great job?!”

As great as the chimpanzee stand-in is at resembling Robbie Williams, the typical viewer won’t give much thought to the animators who brought that illusion to life. Instead, the focus will remain on the subject at hand: the ups and downs of the real Williams, who joined the British boy band Take That at age 15 in 1990 and later found success as a solo artist. I can’t imagine many people outside of England (or even in England, for that matter) were chomping at the bit to hear Williams’ story told, but Better Man does more than just disarm you with animal animation. The stunt casting is merely the central attraction in a film overflowing with flair. Visually and chronologically, director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) and his co-writers Oliver Cole and Simon Gleeson crack the code of how to present Williams’ life in a way that isn’t stagnant and hackneyed.

Warming to the film takes some time. The young Robert is an obnoxious little chimp, who signs his name for a negative guidance counselor with a phallus drawing. The lad’s only goal in life is to be famous. He realizes that goal at an open casting call for impresario Nigel Martin Smith (Damon Herriman), who originally has the five youths (the other four are played by male human actors) performing at gay nightclubs, before adoring heterosexual females emerge as the lucrative audience. Robert becomes Robbie. Wealth and fame soon follow. Fulfillment does not.

Williams, who himself narrates his story, has a cheeky attitude about the band that made him famous, the people who collaborated with him, and his own somewhat shallow ambitions. He also has a father (a solid Steve Pemberton) who vanished after planting the seeds of his dream and a loving grandmother (Alison Steadman) with whom he cherishes spending time.

The movie wisely recognizes that the catalogs of Williams-era Take That and Williams himself are not quite familiar enough to warrant the Bohemian Rhapsody treatment. You know what I’m talking about: the sound booth proclamations of “this song will never work!” and *cut* to spinning Billboard copy with the song at #1. Instead, Gracey focuses more on Williams’ self-destructive tendencies, which are not all that uncommon for young celebrities, but are presented in a unique and honest way here. The abundance of candor complements the excess of flair and together, that combination renders Better Man, against all odds, compelling cinema, even to someone whose knowledge of Williams’ work coming in was limited to “Back for Good” and the Finding Nemo end credits cover of “Beyond the Sea.”

Actor Jonno Davies has the truly thankless task of playing the young Williams as presumably a starting point for the chimpanzee animators. I suspect Davies gave them a lot to work with and I only hope casting directors don’t forget that the way that awards voters always forget that beneath many great CGI characters is an Andy Serkis performance.

Better Man has a staggering reported budget of $110 million, which sets it up for commercial failure outside of the UK, where Williams’ fame has always been centered. Paramount spent $25 million on North American theatrical rights, a moderate gamble that seemed prudent after their Bob Marley biopic grossed nearly $100 million domestically and nearly $200 million worldwide. Of course, Williams is not Marley and the holiday season tends to be much more competitive than mid-February. That latter fact explains why the studio opted to give Better Man merely an awards-qualifying run in six theaters on Christmas Day before expanding to 1,200 screens on this early January weekend.