“I came out of the womb with jazz hands,” pop star Robbie Williams recounts in “Better Man,” his new biopic. “Which was very painful for my mum.”
Badum Dum.
But also: Wow. What an image, to illustrate a man who, we learn, agonized from early childhood as to whether he had “it” — the star quality that could make him famous.
Turns out, he did. Williams became the hugest of stars in his native Britain, making 14 No. 1 singles and performing to screaming crowds (though he never gained traction in the United States.) And whatever else we learn from director Michael Gracey’s brassy, audacious and sometimes utterly bonkers biopic, the key is that Williams’ need to entertain was primal – so primal that it triumphed over self-doubt, depression and addiction. It should surprise nobody, then, that this film, produced and narrated by Williams (now 50), is above all entertaining.
But wait, you may be saying: Five paragraphs in, and you haven’t mentioned the monkey?
Good point. The central conceit of Gracey’s film, you see, is that Williams is represented throughout by a monkey — a CGI monkey, that is (actor Jonno Davies provides the captured moves and speaking voice). This decision is never explained or even referred to.
There’s a clue, though, in one of Williams’ opening lines: “I want to show you how I really see myself.” Gracey based his film on many hours of taped interviews he did with Williams. He says the pop star told him at one point that he felt like a monkey sent out to entertain the masses — particularly in his teens as a member of the boy band Take That. It was Gracey’s idea to take this idea and run with it.
We begin in 1982, in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Young Robert Williams is bad at football and mercilessly taunted. But there’s no football in his DNA, he explains. There is cabaret.
He gets the performing itch from his father. When Sinatra appears on telly singing “My Way,” little Robert jumps up to join Dad (Steve Pemberton, excellent) in singing along. But Dad cares more about performing than parenting, and one day just leaves home for good. Robert is raised by his mum and his adoring grandmother, who assures him he’s a somebody, not a nobody.
At 15, flailing in school, Robert auditions for Take That, the boy band, and somehow makes the cut. The band first covers the gay club circuit — until it emerges that girls go wild over these young men.
Director Gracey, who helmed “The Greatest Showman,” is quite the showman himself, never more obviously than in a terrific musical sequence that chronicles the band’s journey to success. Filmed to Williams’ hit “Rock DJ” on London’s Regent Street and featuring some 500 extras, the number starts with the boys hardly noticed by passersby, representing the start of their career. Gracey illustrates their rise to fame with explosive choreography, pogo sticks, scooters, London buses — all ending in a flash mob with hundreds dancing on the famed street.
And now, Robert is forever Robbie – his name changed by the band’s shrewd manager, Nigel. “Where’s my Robert gone?” asks his grandmother (a touching Alison Steadman), bewildered by the hype. “I’m a pop star now,” he replies.
But fame brings all sorts of trouble for Robbie. Later, he will note that when you become famous, your age freezes – so he never graduates from 15. He sinks into depression and develops alcohol and cocaine habits.
But when the band kicks him out, his competitive fire is stoked: He’s going to have a “massive” solo career. A woman overhears him saying this to himself at a New Year’s party; she turns out to be Nicole Appleton, of the girl band All Saints. Another of Gracey’s grand song and dance numbers (“She’s the One”) covers their troubled relationship, including an abortion.
Nicole ends up leaving Williams (for Liam Gallagher of Oasis), part of a miserable time for the singer, who manages to destroy most of his relationships. But he reaches a career pinnacle, performing at the storied Knebworth Festival to some 375,000 adoring fans.
Gracey punctuates shots of Williams performing with a violent, medieval-style battle between the singer and his demons — other (monkey) versions of him, essentially. It’s another over-the-top sequence that makes this biopic radically different than most — if also a tad indulgent (and a bit too long).
But, hey, it’s all in service of one thing. “Let me entertain you,” Williams seems to be screaming through every scene. Mostly, he succeeds.
“Better Man,” a Paramount release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association “for drug use, pervasive language, sexual content, nudity and some violent content.” Running time: 135 minutes. Three stars out of four.
