The concept is ultimately a high-tech promise that this is a movie which wishes to keep the warts of its star, internal though they might usually be, visible at all times. In theory, it gives heft to what amounts to another celebrity’s poor little rich boy problems after he gets big by the top of Act Two. Your mileage might vary whether it succeeds at having and eating that cake, but at least it makes the concept of such a dessert in a multiplex overstuffed with bakeries seem novel.
Otherwise, the film is mostly the rags-to-riches story you might expect, especially if you are old enough to remember VH1’s Behind the Music portraits of various pop stars. Williams is introduced as an ape born to a human father who is far more boorish than the primate child could ever be: Peter Williams (Steve Pemberton). Peter trains his son to believe that you are either born with “it” or not. Frank Sinatra had “it.” Dean Martin too. Daddy also thinks he has it, even though he walks out on his son before he’s 10 years old so as to pursue a career as a failed pub comic.
This is presumably the kernel of Robert’s desperate need to please, and to punish the animal within. While still being lovingly raised by his mother (Kate Mulvany) and grandmother (Alison Steadman), adolescent Robert (Jonno Davies for presumably most of the movie in a motion-capture suit) yearns to ditch them as soon as possible and become a member of the early ‘90s boy band, Take That. It’s this musical act that turns Robert into “Robbie,” and which is depicted as far more humiliating with their short-shorts and banal cafeteria-club music than any cartoonish monkey business could be. Robbie of course abruptly sunders that relationship as well after bristling at the creative monotony of being a glorified backup dancer—a fate quickly commuted when the other members of Take That kick him out.
What follows is a usual laundry list of musical biopic beats: struggle cut short by sudden “overnight” success; the girlfriend whose life Williams would become a drain on, here personified by fellow pop star Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno); a few other musical cameos that will have audiences chuckling, including a vicious but probably deserved dig at Oasis front man Liam Gallagher (Leo Harvey-Elledge); and Robbie’s inevitable bottoming out. But the intelligence of Better Man’s script is how flippant it is. Not only does it go bananas with Williams’ appearance, but even bits like the inevitable climactic “concert of the star’s life” proving not to be any climax at all as Robbie spends it high as a kite and haunted by visions of his younger self as a baby primate and adolescent twerker stalking him in the audience like the Ghosts of Christmas Past.
It is ultimately Better Man’s recognition that audiences know the beats they’re walking through, and its eagerness to lightly play with them, if never truly subvert them, which gives Gracey’s movie rhythm. It might only be dancing to a familiar hook designed for maximum radio play (or Spotify today), but it uses those same chords well.
Mostly though it benefits from the obvious novelty of the effects. While the marketing and press has blurred how much of the performance in the movie is young Davies, how much is the real-life Williams, and/or whether most of it should be credited to the digital artists at Wētā, the end result is nonetheless effective; cumulatively, it lulls you into pitying this poor put-upon beastie. The combined artistic efforts never once turn into Barnum and Bailey pantomime, even in scenes of Williams dancing with Banno’s Appleton before a sea of fireworks. Instead you become invested in the animated character’s plight as he deals with real demons like regret over the loss of a grandparent, or the complicated resentments that come from a fiancée being pressured by her record label into getting an abortion.