It was a throwaway comment: Robbie Williams, Take That’s cheeky chappie-turned-tabloid fodder solo phenomenon, described himself as a performing monkey, prancing and preening in front of the cameras and seeking the approval of the audience (or at least a banana or two). But for director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman), it was the key to unlocking Williams’s conflicted relationship with his celebrity and his compulsion to perform. In a creative gamble to rival Piece by Piece director Morgan Neville’s decision to tell the Pharell Williams story with Lego animation recently, Gracey replaces Williams in this warts-and-all biopic with a CGI chimpanzee in an otherwise human cast. It’s a gamble that not only pays off – it’s arguably the main reason the film works as well as it does.
Narrated by Williams (Jonno Davies delivers a motion-captured performance as Robbie the Monkey) in a tone that strikes a precarious balance between wry self-deprecation and maudlin self-pity, the story itself is pretty generic stuff: a by-the-numbers trawl through the early hardship of Williams’s working-class childhood in Stoke-on-Trent, father-son tensions and industrial-level substance-abuse issues. The film’s emotional beats – Williams’s doomed relationship with All Saints singer Nicole Appleton; the death of Robbie’s beloved nan – are hammered home with piledriver subtlety. But the capering ape device transforms what would otherwise be a rote addition to the rock biopic canon, infusing the story with humour, mischief and a sparky, unpredictable anarchy. Yes, Williams clearly takes himself pretty seriously and has a weakness for therapy-speak platitudes. But he also invites us to see him as a surly adolescent chimp in a shell suit. You have to love him for that.
Better Man is a notable step up for Gracey. The synthetic, rather soulless panache of The Greatest Showman demonstrated his skills as a slick visual stylist, but here he directs from the heart, tapping into the rawness and vulnerability beneath the CGI monkey suit.
In UK and Irish cinemas
