“Robbie Williams as a chimp” might sound like a baffling premise, but it works much better than you’d think, and puts a unique spin on the conventional biopic formula.
This jukebox musical was a massive flop at the cinema last year, and I admit, I initially found the idea of the British pop star portrayed by a CG chimpanzee too weird and off-putting. I almost had to force myself to check it out on streaming, only because of the glowing reviews from the movie critics I usually follow, and to my surprise, this outlandish idea works from the get-go.
In a way this movie made me feel old, since it’s the first biopic I’ve seen where the famous person is not a relatively distant icon like Bob Dylan or Freddie Mercury, but rather someone I actually grew up with. I skipped Robbie Williams’ boy band phase, but I loved Angels and followed his solo career even before he finally blew up in Australia. Though I was never a true obsessive, the man had some larger-than-life swagger and put out a string of bangers at his peak. The movie wisely sticks to the big hits like Rock DJ, Feel and Better Man, and weaves them into the narrative organically, highlighting the emotion and drama rather than sticking to the correct chronological order.
In most respects, Better Man is your typical biopic journey through the highs and lows. Robert Williams is a child with dreams of being a star and love for Frank Sinatra through his father Peter (Steve Pemberton), a charming scoundrel who eventually abandons his family for a chance of success as an entertainer. As a teenager, Williams crashes and burns while auditioning for a boy band, but catches the attention of manager Nigel Martin-Smith anyway with his show-off attitude and cheeky wink. He gets re-branded as Robbie Williams and joins the line-up mostly as a support for the real star Gary Barlow, who can’t dance but sings like an angel and writes the band’s songs.
Enter fame, screaming girls and a truckload of cocaine. Robbie struggles with clinical depression, alcoholism, and feelings of insecurity that manifest as scowling, jeering faces he sees in the crowd when performing. His erratic behaviour gets him fired from the band, but Robbie resolves to succeed all on his own. He also hooks up with Nicole Appleton from All Saints, a romance I completely forgot about despite it being tabloid fodder at the time. More fame as a solo superstar doesn’t solve Robbie’s problems, and he must wrestle with his demons and heal his fractured relationships before the redemptive comeback. In short, this rise-fall-rise story is not winning any prizes for originality.
The same old story can still be presented in a new and interesting way, and this is where the surreal casting of a computer-generated chimp comes in. It could have been a gimmicky disaster, but it’s not so. The movie establishes early on that nobody around Robbie Williams actually sees him as an ape, and this is more about how he sees himself, as a performing monkey and a less evolved creature. This idea feels at home in a movie that visually embraces a heightened, artificial style, and has characters breaking into a song during big, bold, infectious choreographed sequences. Even more impressively, it doesn’t get in the way of the emotional scenes, which is no mean feat. When chimp-Robbie and Nicole share a romantic kiss, only a very small part of my brain registered the sheer weirdness of the scene.
Real Robbie Williams is present as the narrator and singing voice, and his candid and irreverent commentary injects a lot of his personality into the movie. I have my doubts about how much of the real-life ugliness it was willing to reveal, but Better Man is still unafraid to show Williams on occasions as a “narcissistic, punchable, shit-eating twat”, as he cheekily admits himself to be. This mix of arrogance and vulnerability was always at the heart of his appeal, and it remains true even when he takes on a simian form.
P.S. I felt a tad sorry for the human actor who lent his voice, body and motion capture to chimp-Robbie. Imagine getting a lead role in a biopic playing someone famous, and never having your face onscreen.
P.P.S. It is my personal little annoyance when people mix up apes and monkeys. Monkeys = tails, apes = no tails. Simple!
P.P.P.S. I appreciated the chimp casting even more during the mercifully brief but cringy portrayal of young Liam Gallagher, which felt very much like a bad impersonation.
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