After the huge success of Rocketman (which he produced), Michael Gracey introduces us to the life of Britain's best-selling local artist with a twist: he appears as a computer-generated ape throughout the film.
When Robbie Williams told an interviewer that he felt like a monkey actor, he didn't mean it literally. But that's exactly how "The Greatest Showman" director Michael Gracey interprets the comment in Better Man, a zany musical biopic that surely would have seemed banal (rather than completely absurd) had it featured a live actor in the role of Robbie Williams.
Director: Michael GraceyWriters: Simon Gleeson, Oliver Cole, Michael GraceyStars: Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton
Gracey takes the audience through all the expected beats of Williams' career, from his breakthrough success as a member of Take That to his record-breaking solo concert at Knebworth, but he does so with a computer-generated chimpanzee representing Britpop's bad boy. Against all odds, the trick works, and sets the project apart from so many other cookie-cutter pop star hagiographies. If you want to praise this boy band backing singer turned solo superstar for four hours, watch the documentary series “Robbie Williams” on Netflix. But if you want to see a chimp doing cocaine with Oasis, or getting a fateful handjob in front of manager Nigel Martin Smith (Damon Herriman), this is your movie.
Recently, “Stardust,” “Back to Black” and even “Elvis” were undermined by the chasm we felt between those films’ lead actors and the pop icons they were portraying. By contrast, “Better Man” falls squarely into that uncanny valley — and for once, that’s a good thing. First of all, Americans don’t really know who Williams is, which makes it easy to accept whatever Gracey puts in his place. Better yet, his computer-generated ape counterpart proves far more expressive than most human actors, meaning the movie is built around an animated performance powerful enough to draw tears.
With “Better Man,” the musical maestro adds ridiculously complicated technical challenges to his resume, like the jaw-dropping “Rock DJ” number, which was staged on London’s busy Regent Street, filmed in four days and stitched together to look like a single, uninterrupted take, or the “Come Undone” sequence, in which he speeds away from the boy band’s breakup, nearly crashes his car into an oncoming bus and plunges into a sea of paparazzi. These scenes convey essential emotional information in unimaginably dynamic ways, leaving traditional tuners in the dust.
And yet, “Better Man” suffers from the same problem that plagues nearly all pop star portraits: Rather than picking a significant chapter from their subjects’ lives, these biopics typically take a cradle-to-grave (or cradle-to-rehab, as the case may be) approach. That works for documentaries, but when it comes to dramatic narratives, the strategy forces the world’s most fascinating characters to follow familiar arcs: First they demonstrate natural talent, then they get discovered, then they become incredibly rich and famous, only to sabotage it all with addiction, infidelity and ego. If they’re lucky, they don’t overdose, assuring normies everywhere that they’re better off not being famous.
“Better Man” wants to be “All That Jazz,” but it falls back on the redemptive life story formula, presenting Robbie as a kid — or in this case, a teenage chimpanzee — who seems skinnier (and a lot hairier) than his peers. Little Robbie is bad at sports, worse at school, but a natural clown, as he learns during a school play. Robbie inherits that brash streak from his father, a cabaret comedian (whose stage name is Peter Conway, played here by Steve Pemberton) who leaves home to pursue his own showbiz dreams when Robbie is just a lad.
The truth is more complicated, but a stunted man-child seeking his father’s approval makes Williams relatable. Gracey interviewed the superstar at length about his life, then constructed the narrative he wanted to tell with co-writers Simon Gleeson and Oliver Cole. His angle is frustratingly familiar, though the execution is absolutely astonishing: we’re talking Wachowski-level wit, as Gracey creates sophisticated montages where you can’t even detect the cuts.
Consider the scene where Robbie learns that his staunchest supporter has died, just before he gives his biggest show. The camera opens with a close-up of his eyes, then zooms out to reveal him suspended upside down above the stage.
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