Better Man (2024)

Yes you finally made a monkey out of me

Of all the 2024 movies, it’s the one that most sounds like a 30 Rock gag. I can hear the exchange in my head…

Tracy: “I’m appearing in a film that tells the life story of British pop star Robbie Williams as if he were a monkey.”

Liz: “Tracy, nobody in America knows who Robbie Williams is.”

Tracy: “That’s why he’s a monkey!”

And yet it exists! Better Man is the second film directed by Michael Gracey, the enigmatic Australian who trained under Baz Luhrmann until his debut of The Greatest Showman in 2017. Gracey has been linked to various projects in the seven years since, but other than a Pink promo doc, nothing has seen the light of day with his name on it until this. I hope we don’t have to wait another seven years.

(Note: Friend-of-the-site and general smart person Gavin McDowell, whose wife I once gave COVID to while she was pregnant, is known for his attention to factual detail and his disdain for anyone getting those details wrong. Thus, he has had a field day reminding people that a chimpanzee — which is what Williams is depicted as in Better Man — is technically not a monkey but a great ape. I have now acknowledged the distinction, and will continue to use the term “monkey” imprecisely and incorrectly for the rest of this review. My apologies, Gavin.)

Yes, it’s true, the movie with a premise that doesn’t make sense about a pop star that nobody cares about… is good. Or, at a minimum, it is fascinating; intermittently glorious and provocative. Strong reviews weren’t enough to get people to show up, though. It stumbled to $20 million at the global box office against an eye-popping budget of $110 million. I guess people really don’t want to watch a movie about Robbie Williams.

But that’s shifted a bit since the film arrived on streaming, at least according to Letterboxd numbers and anecdotal evidence. Whether it’s the Oscar nomination or the good word of mouth, viewers are finally starting to find their way to Better Man after its box office floppitude. So here is my plea for you to join us late arrivals.

Better Man has a deeply chaotic soul of creative ideas struggling for dominance. I’m not entirely convinced it lands the plane, but I appreciate the flight nonetheless. As with Greatest Showman, the film struggles under the weight of documented fact that it can’t completely shake. In both films, Gracey leans into the strange characteristics of its central character, zagging into the tonal carnage and trying to own it rather than brushing the messiness aside or whitewashing the story.

The CGI monkey gimmick — and it is a gimmick that never starts feeling even a little natural — is supported by a self-deprecating vocal performance from Williams himself. I’m sure that previous movies have starred animated characters surrounded by live-action supporting casts, and I’m sure movies have starred actors as autobiographical versions of themselves, but have both ever happened at the same time? The monkey definitely improves the non-musical portions of the film by providing a glint of surreality.

The film still a trite biopic, which offers a ceiling for how much I care about any of what happens. This is a ceiling the film crashes into at full throttle, over and over. Better Man hits basically every beat mocked in Walk Hard. Tortured relationship with a father as the catalyst for becoming an artist? Drug use to drown out the demons, leading to a rehab stint? An early girlfriend who salves the wounds but whom the hero cruelly discards? A final scene set at a Very Important concert that serves as a reflection of the long path there? (Robbie Williams needs to think about his whole life before he plays.) It’s all here. It doesn’t help that Williams is a dull, unlikable character. Better Man practically lampshades the nothingness of its subject, that Williams is “interesting” basically just because he’s a famous bad boy. But pointing at a flaw doesn’t magically make it disappear.

No, it’s never the story that makes Better Man interesting, or even the monkey (though, c’mon, a CGI monkey protagonist is pretty unusual). What makes the movie noteworthy is Gracey’s unexpected and exuberant staging of the material. He leaves the stale narrative framework intact, but executes all of it with a colorful joie de vivre, like one of those early century city hall buildings renovated by an art collective.

This is especially true in the musical numbers. These sequences had me prostrate on the floor, bowing at the altar of musical cinema. Some of the songs are intimate, some are angry, some are joyful, and some are simply vessels for pure visual bliss. None is better than “Rock DJ,” a five-minute single-shot summary of the rise of Williams’ boy band Take That. This song features elaborate prop-based choreography, multiple costume changes, and a deep-focus, cast of hundreds of dancers. Again, all of this happens in a single shot, like this is freaking La La Land.

The runner up best song is probably “Let Me Entertain You” near the climax of the film that sees a much-hyped concert at Knebworth Festival turn into a monkey-on-monkey battle. This scene is the culmination of a motif through the film of Williams seeing evil-monkey versions of himself when he’s facing doubt or demons. The image of a dark-mirror monkey is always a bit jarring, and I was ready to pan it as unnecessary, until I realized in the climax that it was all for setting up the huge payoff of an all-out musical-fantasy war scene that’s like Woodstock meets Helm’s Deep.

I have no issues with the technical implementation of the CGI monkey, but I do have a complaint about it: The artificiality of a CGI monkey in the frame nonstop actually distracts from how good some of the direction is. Compare the staging to The Greatest Showman, where the physicality of Hugh Jackman and Zach Efron downing shots and flying around a room is half the fun of “The Other Side.” Better Man has all that energy, but with a very artificial CGI creature at the center of it, it feels a bit flattened and fake.

But Gracey is growing in confidence and ambition from Greatest Showman. He toys with some strange, almost abstract depictions of Williams’ psychological breakdowns: besides the flashes of evil chimps, Gracey employs shadowy cinematography and weird coloring and abrupt time-jumps. Each of these little tricks show a strong sense for using the full toolbox of movies to tell gripping cinematic stories. This isn’t a groundbreaking work in the overall landscape of movies, but amid this musical biopics, it’s bold, fresh, and effective.

Alas, these interesting ideas line up rather than develop. Other than standalone great scenes, Better Man never develops into pure, great cinema. For that matter, I’m not even 100% locked in that Better Man is actually an improvement on Greatest Showman, though I do probably give it the edge. All the visual commotion and great direction is in service of such a painfully by-the-numbers story that it never properly takes off. But the mere fact that the film is as much fun as it is given its wackadoodle pitch and narrative strictures is a massive triumph. Better Man is way more interesting and electric than it has any right to be. So far in his career, Michael Gracey has elevated two films pre-broken by problematic loglines. Maybe the next one can be something other than a misguided biopic.

Is It Good?

Good (5/8)

---

Awards, Honors, & Rankings

• The B.A.D.S. (2024) - Best Song ("Rock DJ") (Winner)
• The B.A.D.S. (2024) - Best Song ("Let Me Entertain You") (Nominee)
• The B.A.D.S. (2024) - Best Visual Effects (Nominee)

---

Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.