At the beginning of 2025, a biopic about Robbie Williams is in the cinema, showing him as a monkey. Better Man is endlessly entertaining, brutally honest and so likeable that it brings tears to your eyes.
Madness and genius are close neighbors, they say. So when The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey came up with the idea for Better Man, he must have had gallons of the former stashed at home: a biopic about Robbie Williams as a chimpanzee who curses like a madman, takes drugs and turns the pop world upside down. But what sounds like a completely crazy idea is one of the most entertaining and emotionally gripping films of recent years. It will be released in theaters in January 2025, but I was able to see it in advance.
Robbie Williams as a primate: That’s what Better Man is about.
Like so many biopics, Better Man begins at the very beginning: Robbie Williams (voiced by Williams himself and embodied by Jonno Davies as a motion capture model) grows up modestly in Stoke-on-Trent, England. His father (Steve Pemberton) dreams of being a celebrated entertainer but leaves the family early. The boy receives love mainly from his mother (Kate Mulvaney) and grandmother (Alison Steadman).
Watch the Better Man trailer here:
His passion for music and theater leads him to the boy band Take That, with whom he celebrates huge success. Eventually, the band kicks him out because of his drug escapades, and he starts a solo career. But with success, his self-doubt, arrogance and tendency towards excess also grow.
Better Man is the answer to a question no one asked. In 2003, at Robbie Williams’ peak, this movie might have made a lot of sense. But now? Robbie Williams is no Taylor Swift. And even die-hard Swifties would frown at a movie that turns their star into a chimp. Gracey’s biopic is (and remains) a curiosity.
Showing Robbie Williams as a monkey is a stroke of luck
But if you dare to look past the bizarre premise, you will encounter a film full of charm from minute one. Director and co-author Michael Gracey presents the main character as a kind of lovable simpleton who follows his passion to places where everyone seems to be smarter than he is. His cheerfulness, his energy, his love of the stage are laughed at or exploited until he sinks into arrogance and cynicism.
And in such moments, the main character’s appearance turns out to be a stroke of luck: I forgive a wild chimpanzee many barbarities for which I would condemn people. When Robbie Williams explains his primate look in the trailer with the words, “I’ve always seen myself as a little less developed,” he’s talking about exactly this strength: this pop star, whether innocent or condescending, whether affectionate or irresponsible, is a force of nature. He’s a tornado that always looks around desperately for the damage he’s done.
Thanks to the animation, the main character is instantly likeable
The fact that the main character invites you to cheer along is not least thanks to the visual effects. The protagonist’s face is a caricature, but only a slight one. The big eyes evoke sympathy, the grin goodwill. The technology doesn’t reach the level of the Planet of the Apes reboot, but it’s precise enough to immediately identify even fleeting emotions. That’s why the mischievous humor or the fear of the animal hero works. I took this monkey to my heart in five minutes.
It’s obvious that the film doesn’t reinvent the wheel dramatically: the pattern of rise and fall follows a predictable path of initial success, excess, healing and reconciliation. Ruthless managers, sex escapades, drug-fuelled crashes, relationship implosions – we’ve seen it all enough in the biopic genre. But it’s a minor matter: you’re happy to follow this cheerful, clumsy, naive main character, even on well-trodden paths.
And unlike other genre representatives like Bohemian Rhapsody, which gloss over or otherwise distort the fate of their characters, Better Man is brutally honest at times: Robbie Williams has treated old friends like dirt, traded loved ones for cocaine excesses and drove relationships against the wall with the greatest rock star arrogance, at least that’s what the scenes of the film suggest.
Better Man is a colorful fever dream that moves to tears
But perhaps the film’s greatest strength is its visuals: Better Man is full of bright colors and rapid cuts that transform many scenes into a visual frenzy. In one crash scene, for example, the obstacle suddenly becomes a water surface that the car breaks through like a projectile, setting in motion a kind of dream sequence.
The dance interludes, for example to the song Rock DJ, unfold like elaborate gala numbers with countless participants, urging you to sing and dance along. In fact, Gracey makes effective use of his main character’s work. He plays Angels during a funeral scene, and I’d like to see those who don’t struggle with tears here.
In the end, Better Man remains a unique biopic and a work for the heart from start to finish. It seems more like a fantastic tragicomedy than a biopic. By literally making a monkey out of its main character, it avoids many tiresome discussions about factual accuracy.
Rather, it replaces the ponderous significance of some genre colleagues with a light-footed flood of color that is always captivating but never overwhelming. This is probably why Better Man disappears from memory faster than tragic epics like Elvis or Walk the Line: Michael Gracey prefers wit and pace, tragic moments rarely last and do not repeat themselves.
As a spectacle, Better Man makes no claim to biographical completeness. This raises the question of what this peculiar, whimsical film is doing in the cinema. Apparently no one was expecting it or explicitly wishing for it.
It is precisely because the film seems so out of place that it is so appealing: it doesn’t wag its finger at history, it doesn’t explain the human condition using the example of a rock star, nor does it hide behind an ultra-precise imitation of an era. Better Man is content to simply entertain, and that’s exactly why it perfectly captures its main character.
