Robbie Williams, the cheeky lad from Stoke-on-Trent who dominated UK pop charts in the '90s and early 2000s, never quite cracked the American market. So it’s no surprise if U.S. audiences ask, “Who is Robbie Williams?” Enter Better Man, the audacious, oddly moving musical biopic from The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey, aiming to answer that question—not with a Wikipedia timeline, but with an emotional fever dream of fame, failure, and redemption.
The film opens on an unexpected note: Robbie is depicted not as himself, but as an anthropomorphic chimpanzee. This striking metaphor sets the tone for the rest of the film. As voiced by Williams and performed through motion capture by Jonno Davies, this simian version of Robbie doesn’t merely serve as a visual gag. It’s a profound symbol of his own self-perception—a “performing monkey” trapped in the glare of the spotlight, caught between spectacle and sincerity.
Gracey’s film embraces this surrealism wholeheartedly. There’s no "reveal" where the monkey turns human. This is how Robbie sees himself, and Better Man commits to this strange vision. In doing so, it crafts one of the most visually and emotionally distinctive biopics in years. Through its unconventional imagery and bold musical staging, the film resists the well-worn ruts of the music biopic genre.
We follow young Robbie from a rough-and-tumble childhood in working-class Stoke. His father, a charming but unreliable entertainer, plants the seed of performance in him—only to abandon the family shortly after. His musical aspirations are dismissed early on, but perseverance lands him a spot in the boy band Take That. At first, they perform in gay clubs before eventually becoming a global phenomenon. “Rock DJ” serves as a dazzling set piece here, transforming Regent Street into a time-traveling whirlwind of costumes and choreography. It's a one-shot wonder, capturing the chaos, joy, and artifice of pop stardom in one breathless montage.
But just as the fame arrives, so do the cracks. The film doesn’t shy away from Robbie’s destructive habits: his rivalry with bandmate Gary Barlow (played by Jake Simmance), substance abuse, and a spiral into mental instability are all laid bare. Gracey stages this with visual flair—like a stylized hallucination during “Come Undone,” in which Robbie races away from his bandmates in a high-octane car chase that turns into a surreal lake of paparazzi flashes. It’s spectacle with meaning, always filtered through Robbie’s distorted inner world.
While Better Man follows familiar beats—early success, a dramatic fall, and eventual redemption—it continually reinvents itself with style. Hallucinations and inner demons appear as spectral doubles of Robbie, heckling him from the stage or haunting his private moments. These manifestations externalize his self-doubt in ways both disturbing and darkly funny. In one scene, a despondent Robbie, dressed in a vacuum-sealed space suit, sobs over a table of cocaine—a grotesque exaggeration of rock-bottom that leans into the absurdity of his self-image without trivializing his pain.
The narrative’s emotional core rests on a handful of key relationships. His romance with All Saints singer Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno) is tender but ultimately doomed. His grandmother Betty serves as his emotional anchor, and her death in the film is one of its most affecting moments. But it’s the strained bond with his father that frames the movie’s emotional arc, culminating in a cathartic onstage duet at the Royal Albert Hall. As the two sing “My Way,” there’s a sincere reckoning—not just between father and son, but between Robbie and his fractured self-image.
Jonno Davies’ motion-capture performance is a technical and emotional achievement, lending physicality to the monkey-Robbie without turning him into a cartoon. And Williams’ voiceover, steeped in world-weariness and biting humor, brings a rare intimacy to the role. He’s not just recounting his life; he’s reinterpreting it through the filter of memory, pain, and performance.
Gracey, known for his glitzy, maximalist approach, reins in just enough to let real feeling emerge. While The Greatest Showman sometimes leaned on spectacle to mask thin characterization, Better Man uses its visual excess to underscore emotional truth. At times, it evokes Rocketman—another British pop biopic that used fantasy to express psychological reality—but Better Man takes things further, blending the satirical edge of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story with the poignancy of Bohemian Rhapsody.
That said, the film does occasionally falter. The standard rise-fall-redemption arc can feel repetitive, and the middle third struggles to maintain momentum as Robbie careens from one self-inflicted crisis to the next. Yet even when the plot dips into familiarity, Gracey's inventiveness behind the camera keeps the film energized.
Despite its bold vision and critical praise, Better Man underperformed financially, earning just $22.4 million against a hefty $110 million budget. Still, it resonated where it mattered most, earning nine AACTA Awards, a slew of visual effects nominations, and a late surge in popularity after its digital release. Its commercial failure may speak more to the limits of international name recognition than the film's quality.
Ultimately, Better Man is less about Robbie Williams the celebrity and more about Robbie Williams the human being—flawed, insecure, theatrical, and desperately searching for meaning in a life of extremes. Whether you’ve followed his career for decades or are hearing his name for the first time, the film invites you into his fractured, fascinating psyche.
It’s messy, gaudy, and completely sincere. Just like the man himself.
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