A singular profile of British pop superstar Robbie Williams.

Music biopics have been ten a penny of late, with the simple formula of a popular artists songs and their life story proving an easy draw for a variety of filmmakers. In the last year alone, we’ve had biopics of Amy Winehouse, Pharrell Williams, Bob Marley, with Bob Dylan and Maria Callas movies to follow. The competition in this genre of late has led to filmmakers trying out different techniques to stand out from the crowd, and after Pharrell Williams’s story was told via Lego in the flop ‘Piece by Piece’, we have ‘Better Man’, which has another Williams, Robbie in this case, played in the form of a monkey. It shouldn’t work and the trailer is rubbish, but I actually really, really enjoyed this, and I don’t think it’s just because I generally like Robbie Williams music.

The movie covers Robbie Williams life, from his childhood to the present, touching on his period in Take That, his successful solo career, and his demons and challenges that impacted him along the way. Despite Williams involvement in the production (he also voices himself, with Jonno Davies ‘playing’ him as a monkey), it is quite candid and open and doesn’t shy away from some of the negative aspects of his time in the spotlight, including drug and alcohol abuse and cheating on his partner. He also freely admits that revenge was a big motivator in his desire to make a success of his solo career, rooted in a childhood where his relationship with his father (played by Steve Pemberton) was complicated to say the least. For those familiar with Williams music you may recall a song called ‘Me and My Monkey’, which references how he felt he always had a ‘monkey on his back’, and that forms the basis for the stylistic choice to depict himself as a monkey, which works better than it has any right too.

A large part of that is down to the freshened up musical numbers, which are well chosen from his career, but don’t overwhelm the narrative and are only inserted at key points (as opposed to being a ‘true’ musical). Robbie Williams operated in a strange place in British musical history, not quite cool enough to be Britpop, but not quite as cheesy to be pop as for instance, Take That were (pre-2000s reunion), but he’s made a brilliant career for himself with some excellent songs (written with Guy Chambers, some of the most enjoyable scenes in the movie), and ‘Better Man’ is one of the stronger musical biopics of late and I really enjoyed it.

Rating: 4/5

Directed By: Michael Gracey

Starring: Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton, Kate Mulvany, Alison Steadman, Damon Herriman and Raechelle Banno

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt14260836/