Better Man

You won’t see another music biopic quite like “Better Man,” regardless of your level of familiarity with its subject. There’s a surfeit of charm here that helps sell the nonsensical gimmick.

Better Man, a delightfully unhinged musical biopic from director Michael Gracey, chronicles the singer’s tumultuous rise, celebrates his effervescent body of Brit-pop hits, and gives the project of ensconcing Williams in the hearts and minds of the global masses another go.

Better Man is a notable step up for Gracey. The synthetic, rather soulless panache of The Greatest Showman demonstrated his skills as a slick visual stylist, but here he directs from the heart, tapping into the rawness and vulnerability beneath the CGI monkey suit.

The most batshit music biopic since Todd Haynes did the Karen Carpenter story with Barbie dolls, Michael Gracey pulls off the biggest cinematic surprise of the year. An absolute blast. 

“Let me entertain you,” Williams seems to be screaming through every scene. Mostly, he succeeds.

Given the craziness of the concept, it is surprising that several of the scenes work as well as they do.

Well, there’s one way for a biopic about a self-loathing, self-aggrandizing, self-pitying and self-involved music star seem different: Make him an ape.

Wow, what an amazing production! I very rarely ever like musicals, but when it’s done this well and serves the story, I’m all for it.

For positives, I thought most of the musical sequences, particularly the Take That/Rock DJ one on Regent Street at the beginning of the film, were really impressive and mesmerising! It comes with the territory, but the soundtrack was banger after banger after banger! Even though the context for the songs were changed, somehow each song felt perfectly apt for each scene it played over. The Angels sequence near the end reduced me to tears. On another technical level, the CGI for the monkey (Yes, Robbie Williams is portrayed as a monkey and no, it is never touched on), is exceedingly good. I thought that Better Man offered an interesting look at the effects of fame on someone who has openly admitted they couldn’t cope with it. And while this was a refreshing and unique approach, towards the end it came across as quite self-pitying so the film felt like a sob story more times than not. As much as Better Man is truthful to Robbie’s story, you cannot deny that the drug misuse, working class upbringing, disappointing and absent father beats are classic biopic traits. I don’t think anyone who is finding the music biopic genre tiring is going to find anything to love in this film as it’s very similar to lots of others out there. Every biopic seems to walk the same path under all the glitz and glamour (and copious amounts of c0ke). My main issue with Better Man was that the story was not cohesive - I don’t think the film flowed very well at all. On top of this, some scenes seemed like they ended way too quickly (Knebworth for example) and some scenes dragged on for much longer than they should’ve. As a result of the incoherent story the pacing felt excruciatingly slow at points. I also changed my opinion on multiple times throughout on whether portraying Williams as a monkey worked. Take from that what you will!

(Mauro Lanari) The new Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, an operetta crooner choreographed in stadiums for world tours, a maudit playboy résumé, a Beverly Hills underdog: the kitsch musical suits him. He anticipates criticism to neutralise it, but that doesn't make it any less true. He started with "Life thru a Lens" ('97), a heterogeneous melting pot of tracks not due to eclecticism but rather because, after Take That and as a debut album, he hadn't defined his own musical style and was still searching for a solo identity, trying to intercept disparate trends without a clear vision; now he has ended up duetting with Laura Pausini. Of Britpop, he only recorded "Lazy Days," a track composed for him by Guy Chambers and Beatlesque to the core with the distorted, gritty tones of a Wurlitzer 200A electric piano almost similar to the Hammond with a Leslie rotor that was all the rage in the Madchester sound (and indeed, no one from that scene had as much success, nor is the song included in the biopic). Also excellent is the minimalism of the piano played by Jon Douglas in "Feel," ruined by the swaggering, histrionic video with Daryl Hannah. The mainstream popstar, beyond Elton John's glam and with demons he's monetizing heavily, feels he is a monkey, a mask over a mask all made of plastic (or CGI), far removed from Abrahamson's "Frank" (2014). A reference to DEVO or to Burroughs and drug addiction? A well-deserved box-office flop, were it not for the fact that the soundtrack had already reached its 15th UK number-one album, tying the Fab Four's record.

Redundant, indulgent, shallow, dragging, predictable, and annoying. Maybe don't make a biopic when you are only like 40? The choice of the chimp was the ONLY interesting idea in this. Some of the interactions between father and son were almost provacative, but also too cut and paste. Biopics struggle with being a predictable genre, we all know, and this one is all that along with a massive dose of self aggrandization.

I went with a group and we all hated it. Some were saying, “That’s a zero stars”. I agree. Couldn’t wait for it to be over.