Everybody on the planet knows Robbie Williams. We have grown up hearing his songs, we have been aware of the maniac energy he brought to the music scene and we are aware of how chaotic his life was before and after he burst into the limelight. So, expecting anything particularly unique from “The Greatest Showman” fame director Michael Gracey’s “Better Man” is like finding a needle in a haystack. So, traversing the conventional biopic doesn’t really become his focus. Instead, he tries to take Williams’s life and presents it in a way that voyeurs see him.
Gracey employs a very basic ploy to tell his tale. Instead of showing and following Robbie Williams, the main figure that represents him is replaced by a CGI monkey (motion captured by Jonno Davies). The idea here is to present him as a less evolved version of a man – a musician and a performer. The gimmick sounds preposterous and downright insensitive, but it somehow works because the kind of chaotic life the musician has had quietly replicates that of a monkey who is meant to entertain.
The initial part of the film sets up the familiar story that we have come to expect from biopics about musicians. Williams’s early life in England was all about how he was bullied as a teenager who could never get the idea of kids liking football. Instead, he wanted to be with his mostly absent father, who used to love Cabaret and would sing along with little Williams. And of course, he developed a taste for singing to his heart’s content, even when his father was not around. The absence of his father – a daddy complex is at the heart of the story and follows him around throughout his life.
Charting Williams’ flowing energy – audaciously cut sequences involving musical numbers so well done that you can’t help but sing and grove to it; are intercut with the narrative as he joins his first major breakthrough – the boy band ‘Take That.’ The central conceit, which felt jarring at first slowly starts getting you invested and at ease. So, by the time, the film takes the first big narrative jump – the singer having to leave the boy band to go solo, you are into what Gracey is offering here.
However, that’s where the film also starts getting increasingly familiar and the narrative doesn’t have anything new to offer other than Williams’ brooding personality that always wanted to entertain but at his own pace and inability to care. The stage was his life and beyond that and his consistent grief of not being loved by his father – the film offers very little to nothing deep about the star.
That said, this is a spectacle worth sitting through for the way it has been staged and presented. This is a blast for someone looking to have a great time at the movies. The non-stop movement that the director offers with his muscular, chaotic filmmaking is one of a kind. In a way, it feels like director Michael Gracey and Robbie Williams were meant for each other, and “Better Man” just proves how well certain collaboration can be.
![Azor [2021] Review: A Solid Thriller that Engrosses More than It Thrills](https://www.highonfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Azor-2021-scaled-e1631120667650-768x430.jpg)
![Ultrainocencia [2022]: ‘Slamdance’ Review – A Quirky and Imperfect Mix of Performance Arts and Cinema](https://www.highonfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Ultrainnocence-Slamdance-768x432.jpg)
