Film: Better Man

A review of the new Robbie William biopic

Better Man

Director: Michael Gracey

Sina Studios / Paramount Picture

The rise, and fall, and rise again of Robbie Williams is chronicled here in Better Man — because the thing about Robbie is you just haven’t heard his story properly. You’ve listened to (or had the option to hear) his cheeky-chap interviews and stage banter, including a half dozen DVD releases and live albums, there’s been two volumes of memoir, and a multi-part Netflix documentary series, but the man really needs his story out there so you can truly understand him.

Enter a CGI monkey — a brilliant move — to play the role of the song and dance man, er ape. Here’s Robbie the chump, er chimp. Here’s the dance-monkey-dance kid from the council estates, the chav made good. You think he’s probably made a monkey out of himself and every situation? Well, allow him to make that joke first!

Better Man is funny, and plays into how a biopic is made and presented in the most standard (if not cliché) of ways, but it has this magic trick of the monkey, which instantly subverts it. The young Robert is a monkey without explanation. His human parents love him, well his mum sure does. His dreamer, absentee father is off battling a silent depression or at least delusion — the entertainer genes were passed on from him. That’s either his greatest gift to Rob, or the worst curse — depends how you feel about him, and how you consider it manifests. Robert, eventually Robbie, is crippled with self-doubt and beats up on himself, he’s searching to be loved and make people happy, one of entertainment’s and many entertainer’s great ironies, since he isn’t happy, and cannot love, either himself, or anyone else. His love is for a spotlight. His self-loathing kicks in both as soon as it fades and most cripplingly when he’s right under it.

From the near “Beatlemania” or Spice Girls-adjacent hype of boy band Take That, which Robbie muscles in on via aforementioned cheeky charm, to letting a bad boy persona curse and course through him like some dark side of the force, this is Robbie’s rags to riches to raging to recovery story, or at least the bits he wants us to see — this time. More warts, and more all, than previous — but control freak-managed enough that he is our narrator with film sign-off, and a brand new song for the end credits init luv!

Better Man is a better movie than it might have any right to be when you consider that it was made by the man that gave us The Greatest Showman, and when you take that it is about a narcissistic mid-talent pop star with the thinnest of skins, and a desperation to be adored all whilst acting like a juvenile prick for most of his life.

But Michael Gracey lets story dictate the songs for the most part, making this only occasionally a musical, and making a meal of that only as a way of punctuating moments. The slight negatives in this telling are that it is too long — a good half-hour should have been shaved from this monkey’s back to give us a much better, sharper story and flow. The first 90 minutes are close to electric, you’re even rooting for this sad clown for most of it. The final 45 feel like a bored and boring slog. And this is obviously a non-fans view, the hardcore faithful will have lapped this up and I’ll acknowledge that, but the attempt to give a weight to these songs that simply isn’t there rankles just a tad. These are pedestrian lyrics and Music Hall Goes to Night School for Extra Cedit arrangements — their great triumph is that the public bought them, the first time. Paid up because they liked the hook, or maybe the cheekbones attached, or both. But suggesting these were written as serious plunges into a soul — a soul which the film spends its overlong run time looking for — is a giant fucking swing between the treetops.

The film is most successful in showing Williams’ desperate need to be taken seriously whilst acting like a drunken goose for much of his start in adult life. He attempts domestic bliss with Nicole Appleton — but is jealous of her success, and in misguided competition with Oasis. That he loses Nicole to Liam Gallagher, and they have a baby together when Appleton aborts her child with Williams at the behest of her record company and manager, is cruel justice or irony, or both, and it’s handled in a dizzying fashion — because it clearly hurts Robbie to go deep on this still — but it provides the movie with much better emotional weight than lyrics like “As my soul heals the shame/I will grow through this pain”.

What permeates this film — especially given its end on the high of playing to over 100,000 people at Knebworth — is that Robbie would crawl over more abortions in a monkey suit penning inane rhymes while receiving teenaged handjobs if it meant he could just crack America. And in some sense there’s a brutal honesty there. There is some proof of a person trying to somehow admit to how readily his ego bruises, and how so many of these beat-ups are internal. Or at least start(ed) that way.

Maybe I watched Better Man and liked it because I am a Better Man than Williams. I sure liked it a lot. A very entertaining film that was mostly skilfully told and revealing and better than his previous attempts to tell his story.

But Never Ever would I have thought the goal of a Robbie Williams biopic would be to have you wanting to revisit the music of the band All Saints. But (I know) that is where I’m at!