OSCARS 2025: Better Man (2024)

2024 was a great year for Hollywood's most underrepresented minority: Computer-generated apes. The Academy passed up a chance to have the Visual Effects category be entirely dominated by digital primates, leaving out “Godzilla X Kong” and “Gladiator II's” shaved baboons. However, it is still a slate heavy with talking chimps and flying monkeys this year. Probably the weirdest example of 2024's most delightful trend was “Better Man,” a biopic about Robbie Williams in which he's portrayed as a damn dirty ape. Strangely, the main question the film prompted in the United States was not “...why?” Instead, “Better Man” got us bloody yanks to ask “Who the hell is Robbie Williams?” I have a long enough memory to vaguely recall “Millennium,” Williams' sole hit over here, but I had no idea he was some sort of pop phenomenon in his native U.K. Paramount paid a pretty penny for the film, the latest in a long line of attempts to Make Robbie Williams Happen in the U.S., only to see it flop. Nevertheless, the audacity of its premise caught the attention of critics and film nerds, who have had kinder things to say about it than they ever did Williams' music. 

When Mr. Robert Williams was but a young chimp, he lived in a poor part of Stoke-on-Trent with his beloved Nan, hardworking mother, and his entertainer father. Dad was often absent and Robbie became determined to win his attention by becoming a song-and-dance ape himself. He learns of an open audition to put together a boy band, seeing it as his one shot at fame. Robbie wins the talent agent over by being a smart-ass rapscallion, becoming the hairiest member of pop group Take That. The quintet soon becomes a sensation in England but Robbie is frustrated by the pressures of stardom and playing second banana to the group's assigned leader. He develops a massive drug habit to quiet the lingering thoughts of failure in his brain. Robbie's monkey business gets him kicked out of Take That but he sets off on a solo career, writing his own songs and becoming more popular than his band mates. He's a superstar now but still feels like a fuck-up, doing more drugs and pushing away his loved ones. Can this primate performer defeat his own self-doubt, overcome addiction, and evolve into an upright human man? 

Before you can discuss anything else about "Better Man," you have to address the chimpanzee in the room. The film resembles the standard musician biopic in many ways, what with its story of a talent emerging from nothing, becoming a star, tumbling into sex and drugs, and surviving to win more respect. Except, of course, for its subject being portrayed as an anthropomorphic P. troglodyte. The other characters never acknowledge this creative choice and the film always treats Robbie as if he's human. It must symbolize something then. Is it a reference to how Williams felt like a "dancing monkey" for his manager and record label? Or perhaps a literalization of how his snorting and boozing makes him into a beast? The film was sold with the tagline "Fame makes a monkey of us all," suggesting "Better Man" is about the dehumanizing nature of stardom. Williams himself justifies the choice by saying he's "always felt less evolved than other people." The truth is the monkey means all of these things and nothing at all. It's an elaborate but hollow charade, the viewer projecting any meaning onto it that they want. Which is also, I suppose, a good metaphor for the relationship between the pop star and their fan following. 

The real reason, I believe, that "Better Man" depicts Williams as an upright tschego is mostly to distinguish it from every other rock star biography. Robbie Williams' story isn't especially unique among pop singers who grappled with fame, family, and substance abuse. The required sequence of Robbie in rehab and detoxing almost feels like an afterthought. Instead, the choice allows director Michael Gracey to go on all sorts of bizarre flights of fancy. The film is more a traditional musical, with imaginative song and dance sequences breaking out at any moment. The visuals are often hyper-stylized, the camera swinging through rapidly edited montages that represent Williams' state of mind. Making the pop idol into a hairy hominid actually isn't the film's sole fantastical element, as it often explodes into dream-like set pieces. Such as Robbie crashing his sports car and being pulled down by spectres of his voracious fan girls. Or Take That prancing through the streets and progressing through an entire career's worth of custonms and dances within one song. "Better Man" embraces the surreal life of being a celebrity by becoming a series of expressive music videos. 

The film's most frantically realized sequence is a show stopper number in which Robbie has a bloody sword fight with past versions of his pop star persona. This includes ones depicted earlier in the film and references to some of his music videos, such as a skinless ape or one in KISS make-up. That is a cumulation of "Better Man's" most effective creative choice. Any time Robbie performs, he sees visions of himself-as-ape sneering at him, telling him he's a loser, a phony, destined to fail. As someone cursed with a mixture of depression and OCD, this is an extremely accurate depiction of negative self-talk. A lot of rock biopics stumble over making the inevitable drug-induced bad behavior seem like anything but childish self-pity. By visualizing Robbie's struggle with his own doubts and fears, you actually understand why he's always drunk, high, strung-out, or fucking. It turns the voices off and distracts him from his own crushing, inescapable feelings of never being good enough. 

The film depicts the secret to Williams' success being his blokey, sarcastic wit. He's never above telling people to fuck off, making a clown of himself, or doing and saying whatever outrageous thought comes into his simian skull if it'll entertain people or get some attention. "Better Man" follows this lead, Williams' contributing a voice over narration often laced with fourth wall breaking jokes and confessions. He describes himself as a narcissistic twat in the first scene, the script going along with this often self-deprecating approach. That might have been enough to distinguish "Better Man" from every other rock star story, though I agree that the computer generated monkey was the real stroke of genius. The film is certainly a far wartier warts-and-all depiction than most. Its primate protagonist puts a Tony Montana sized amount of coke up his nose, looks ridiculous in a series of campy costumes, and is reduced to a long-limbed junkie before the end. Unlike your average rockography, "Better Man" never has much pretensions about the value of Williams' music. He only wants to make people smile, to give 'em a larf. This goes a long way towards making the film more interesting than it probably would've been otherwise. 

Which isn't to say that "Better Man" is a parody or non-sentimental. It's certainly very funny – such as in a hilarious scene when Robbie argues with his childhood best friend while snorting lines and vacuum sealing his sequined body suit – and glib in a lot of ways. However, the story of Williams' emotional journey is played totally straight. His relationship with his grandmother, who eventually sinks into senility, aims right for the heart. Similarly, his child-like pleas to be seen, loved, and accepted are never laughed at. Perhaps because the rest of the film is so willingly nutty, these emotional strokes usually work fairly well. I'll admit, the plight of sad chimpling Robbie being bullied by school mates and unloved by his absent dad got to me. However, pairing Darwinian antics and debauchery with heartfelt emotions only goes so far. The subplot about Robbie's relationship with his dad never quite convinced me. The elder Williams is depicted as opportunistic, capricious, and self-centered. When he tries to literally pull a crashed-out Robbie from a lake, he shouts mean but totally accurate statements as his dad. However, the film concludes with an emotional reconciliation between father and son. The idea is that every important person in our lives had a hand in making us who we are, whether they behaved badly or not. Maybe this is my own Daddy Issues talking here but I had a lot more trouble accepting that Mr. Peter Williams was worthy of forgiveness for abandoning his boy than that a motion-capture bonobo could become Britain's biggest pop star. 

Well, maybe the love story between Robbie and Nicole Appleton, of all girl group All Shine, could have been a bit more fleshed-out. I have no previous familiarity or built-in fondness for the songs in the movie but they are all pretty decent. As far as overproduced pop nonsense goes, they seem fun. The nominated visual effects are indeed impressive. The CGI artists did a great job making Robbie's chimpy facial features and eyes surprisingly expressive. While it cannot escape the pitfalls of the genre, "Better Man" does manage to be a musician biopic not quite like any other. It's visual flash-bang, willingness to get wacky, and off-hand approach to its subject makes the standard arc wildly entertaining. Which is a statement that Robbie Williams, both the man and the monkey, would probably approve of. [8/10]