Whatever your opinion of the troubled British entertainer Robbie Williamsbetmaster, it’s unlikely to be more scathing than his own. And if there is one thing that distinguishes the electrifying musical biopic “Better Man” — aside from the fact that Williams is portrayed throughout as a computer-generated monkey — it would be an unwavering commitment to its subject’s self-flagellating point of view.
Excerpted from 18 months of audio recordings obtained by the director, Michael Gracey, Williams’s caustic, often vulnerable narration is the melody that refreshes and enriches the movie’s otherwise familiar beats of pop-star meltdown and resurrection. Enumerating decades of suffered insults — “punchable” being one of the kindest — Williams describes a cocky, working-class kid who “came out of the womb with jazz hands” and a desperate need to please his fame-obsessed father (a moving Steve Pemberton). Those twin desires would drive him to teenage stardom in the early 1990s as a member of the boy band Take That, followed by a hypersonic solo career seemingly sustained as much by alcohol and cocaine as by talent.
There will be more than one crash and burn. Yet, remarkably, Williams never comes across as self-pitying. His consistently cheeky voice-over, along with the vivacity of Jonno Davies’s performance as his adult avatar (using the motion-capture wizardry perfected on the “Planet of the Apes” reboot), and the sheer verve of Gracey’s filmmaking ensure a tone that’s rarely less than exuberant. Smoothly combining comedy and tragedy, the movie sells its simian frontman with straight-faced sincerity. It’s astonishing how quickly and easily we embrace the gimmick, a brilliant visualization of how Williams at times saw himself, as someone with no more worth than a capering monkey whose preferred headgear reads “Northern Scum.”
Drawing on the work of Bob Fosse and Terry Gilliam, the director and his choreographer, Ashley Wallen, design dreamlike musical sequences that vault far beyond those in his polarizing debut feature, “The Greatest Showman” (2017): a flash mob erupting on London’s Regent Street to the sound of the Williams hit “Rock DJ,” stunningly captured by Erik Wilson’s soaring, snaking camera; a gorgeously romantic shipboard rendition of “She’s the One,” as Williams meets his future fiancée, the girl-band singer Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno), for the first time.
This fondness for spectacle can feel hucksterish, but “Better Man” is too tender and empathetic — especially in its surprisingly sweet finale — to settle for just the razzle-dazzle. Instead, Gracey paints a fabulously entertaining and touching picture of an insecure, complicated man hauling himself from a quicksand of grasping fans, greedy impresarios, unresolved addictions and father-son dysfunction. Neither hagiography nor hatchet job, the movie casts an understanding eye on a once-infamous musical artist who weathered dizzying highs and devastating lows. Think about it: Is there anything worse than losing your woman to a member of Oasis?
Better ManRated R for familiar vices and unfamiliar diphthongs. Running time: 2 hours 14 minutes. In theaters.
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