At least for American audiences, the movie musical Better person is quite a hard sell. It’s a strange-sounding project: a music biopic in which the protagonist is replaced by a CG chimpanzee, built around the career of an international superstar and former boy band member who never really broke through in the United States. Americans do not share the rest of the world’s fascination with pop singer Robbie Williams, despite his fourteen chart-topping hits, regular presence in British tabloids and sassy, virus-friendly music videos. (Note: That video alone has 107 million views, and it’s not even close his most viewed hit, “Angels.”So the idea of a biopic might not have immediate appeal to American viewers, even if that “monkey protagonist” gimmick adds some intrigue.
But even though the film is drawn from Williams’ life, it’s still better to think of it as a fantasy film. Director Michael Gracey previously turned PT Barnum’s career into a dazzling, ultra-popular musical film The greatest showmanwhile being glossed over or revised most of the reality of Barnum’s life and work. While Better person gets closer to the truth about Williams’ history, in the same way plays with image and emotion over factsespecially when it comes to the music. Just as Gracey replaces Williams with a monkey for various reasons (more on that later), he fictionalizes and expands the story of his subject. More importantly, he tells the story through fantasy sequences so daring, expressive and visually striking that the effects dominate the film.
Actor Jonno Davies plays Williams for mo-cap purposes throughout the film, as he grows up as a swaggering, attention-hungry braggart in a tense working-class household. As a teenager, he gets his first chance at national fame when producer Nigel Martin-Smith (Damon Herriman) chooses him to join the manufactured boy band Take That, which achieves enormous success. (Time later described the fandom surrounding the band as “the 90s version of Beatlemania.”)
The usual behind-the-scenes drama ensues: depression, substance abuse, arrogance and alienation, a low point, a recovery and a revival. But the basic beats don’t matter as much as the way Gracey delivers them, through bravura scenes of Williams and his cohorts traveling through a spinning, mutating fantasy version of London’s Regent Street, or with zombie-like hordes of paparazzi attacking Williams underwater. in a set piece straight out Aquaman‘s trench battle.
Better person is more overtly constructed around Williams’s emotional experience of his life than around a sober reconstruction of events: presumably he never fought 110,000 versions of himself in a bloody, over-the-top battle royale set on ‘Let me entertain you.” If nothing else, the timeline can nitpick at the way music from across Williams’ career is used to portray emotional moments from vastly different parts of his history. But the full-fledged fantasy approach lets Gracey escape the usual queasy questions about fidelity to the truth in a biopic. When your leading man is an ape operating in a human world, how can anyone miss that the approach is more about image and sensation than factual precision?
That central conceit, of Robbie Williams as an ape-man among men, gives Gracey a lot of extra visual appeal, but also serves as a powerful metaphor. He and Williams have given different reasons for the approach: in the film itself, Williams says only that he has always seen himself as “a little less developed” than other people. In other interviews, Gracey has spoken about wanting to distance the audience from reality so they do the same better accept the unreality of a musicalor about simply needing a gimmick to prevent another similar biopic from being made.
And prior to the film’s release, Williams and Gracey released a music video citing a very different reason: Gracey says he was inspired by Williams complaining about being “dragged on stage to perform like a monkey,” and he decided to make that clip. idea literally and tangibly.
But beyond these justifications, present Better person‘s subject as a literal animal, a different being from everyone around him, Gracey leans into the themes of Williams’ alienation and sense of separation. Whether the barrier is his bottomless hunger for attention, the way he struggles with drugs and alcohol while his boy band peers seem physically and emotionally healthier, the way his fame distances him from his family and former friends, or simply the way which he constantly craves. To gain approval from a father busy chasing his own form of fame, Williams is set apart from the world. By framing the film around the most self-deprecating, instinct-driven version of his self-image, the point is driven home in every shot, without the need for exposition.
And there is also a destructive, animalistic side to the monkey image. Wētā FX, the effects house behind the Planet of the Apes films, gives Williams an expressive and believable chimp face and detailed chimp skin, but keeps his body language and physical form largely human. Yet there is an atavistic danger in Williams’ angry or fearful moments on screen, as he beats his chest or bares his teeth. In those moments, he feels far more dangerous to those around him, and far less in control, than any human character.
All that, plus the ambitiously wild musical sequences, disappears Better person as a spectacle film worth sharing with multiplexes and audiences Bad. It’s seemingly designed more for fans of immersive, Wētā-centric fantasy worlds like the Planet of the Apes or Lord of the Rings films than for fans of pop music history – or even for Williams himself. (Netflix has a four-part documentary about Williams’ life and career for those looking for a more factually driven approach.) By the end, viewers may be curious to learn more about Williams as an artist and personality, or to dig deeper into his discography.
But the Better person experience is more like watching a standout Bollywood musical or a Baz Luhrmann spectacle Moulin Rouge! than watching an episode of Behind the music. Most musicals translate emotion into song. This one goes one step further and translates emotion into a bold central gimmick. It’s experimental and explosive. Even for those who aren’t invested in Williams’ work or have no prior knowledge of his career, it’s worth watching Gracey fill the screen with energy and enthusiasm, with a mesmerizing staging designed to delight the senses of the audience. to overwhelm the audience and ensure that they walk out singing. .
Better person is in theaters now.