Review: Robbie Williams' run-of-the mill Better Man biopic gets the blockbuster treatment

Saturday, 28 December 2024, 2:03 pm
Article: RNZ

Dan Slevin, Film Reviewer

Review - Even though I am quite fond of a lot of Robbie Williams' music, I've always thought it tries very hard to win you over.

There's not a lot of restraint or subtlety there.

Take Williams' 1998 single 'Millenium' as an example; it has - to my untrained ear - about four different hooks in it, three more than most pop songs usually get. It's as if Williams and his collaborators kept asking for more, and the end result is gloriously overflowing.

You could say the same about the ingratiating new film based on Williams' life, Better Man, in which a frankly run-of-the-mill story about fame and the pitfalls of getting everything you want before you know who you really are, gets the blockbuster visual effects treatment usually reserved for superheroes and space operas.

The gimmick is that Williams has always considered "Robbie" to be a character, detached from the real Robert Williams, and that he sees himself as something of a performing monkey, hence the digital rendering of the character as a stunningly photorealistic simian/pop star hybrid.

It's a great idea, and the reason why Better Man is watchable at all, but I'm not sure that the psychological premise entirely holds up.

The performing monkey analogy makes it sound like Williams is a creation of other people, a puppet dancing to the tune of management and the music industry, but the film goes to strenuous lengths to show how much he wanted it and still does.

Watching Better Man, I could see parallels between Williams and other British pop acts. In the recent documentary about Sir Elton John, Never Too Late, which is on Disney+, Sir Elton talks about the troubled relationship he had with his father who disapproved of his choice of career and who never even saw him perform. In the recent Nick Broomfield documentary, The Stones and Brian Jones (which is on DocPlay), there's a yawning, yearning, gap in Jones' emotional makeup as he desperately wants approval from a father who remains unreachable.

The relationship between Williams and his dad, the man who introduced him to show business but then left the family to pursue his own dreams, is the core of the Better Man story.

Like Sir Elton and Jones, Williams filled the gap with sex, drugs and booze. Sir Elton and Williams recovered but Jones never made it.

And Williams' competitiveness means he has overstuffed his life - like his music and this film. He chose the pop star dream and then dialled all of the aspects of it up beyond 11 - even the torment, the addiction and the selfishness - because there is no such thing as "too much" in Willams' world.

Better Man is rated R13 for drug use, offensive language and mental health themes. It is out in cinemas.

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