BETTER MAN

BETTER MAN

Directed by Michael Gracey

Who is Robbie Williams? If you were a young gay watching TRL in 1999 you probably vaguely remember this sexy British crooner with an edge. A former member of the boy band Take That, Williams has enjoyed massive success worldwide while maintaining relative anonymity in the states. BETTER MAN is his splashy big budget biopic musical, except the entire film he's depicted by a CGI monkey.

Played with a straight face the entire time, you get used to the monkey almost immediately and the motion capture tech does a fine job of blending in the visual. This is a fun cheeky biopic with huge staged musical sequences and lots of heart, that's what I was expecting. What surprised me is how raw and vulnerable Williams allows the movie to be. A severe case of arrested development (admittedly stunted at 15 when Take That blew up), Williams used his success as a bandaid for all his woes."I thought being famous would solve all my problems". 

It kinda takes big monkey balls to admit stuff like that while also depicting the entertainer in the deepest throws of depression and severe alcohol and drug abuse. It's harrowing at times and impressive the lengths the film will go to show what that abuse does to a mans life and his thought patterns. Less focused on his career milestones and more on how absolutely messed up he was offstage at the height of popularity. Sweaty and jittery with increasingly paranoid fears, cocaine has never looked worse onscreen. 

The music is phenomenal, particularly a rollicking showstopper of a number to "Rock DJ". We see lots of Take That ass in those fun early sequences as well as more 90s nostalgia with an Oasis (the band) cameo played by people who would come in 3rd place at a lookalike contest. The emotional moments land hard, and there's plenty of them. Did I cry my eyes out at the end? Wouldn't you like to know.  🎶 Millennium 🎶

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Out of 4