Better Man

Robbie Williams is quite possibly one of the biggest musicians to ever come out of the UK, but maybe not since no one over here has ever even heard of him.

At some point, someone decided to make a biopic about him. And instead of making it a normal biopic, they turned him into a monkey. My question is why? Why a monkey? Why not just the normal guy? In the movie Robbie says that’s how he sees himself. That’s it. That’s all the explanation we get. It’s enraging.

I say it wasn’t a normal biopic, but it kind of is. It has all the typical musical biopic “tropes” once you get past him being a monkey, which I couldn’t. He has his familial issues, a drug problem (that they won’t let you forget about), and the music industry that just won’t see what he sees in himself.

There’s a wide variety of musical and dance numbers that just don’t quite stick. The biggest being the only original song for this movie that I know of and that had the best choreography of the whole movie. We got bouts of adolescent monkey man talk-singing to himself and a few what felt like live concert footage. Not sticking to a certain variety really felt like a mistake. The British have shit awful taste in music if this is what we’re getting out of them. I found the lyrics to be overly cringey, awful, and at times Robbie’s voice sounded like Gollum.

There are too many characters that get forgotten about because they come and go in an instant. Situations are shown in a way that makes you feel dumb for not knowing what’s happening, but we never even had a chance to find out what was happening in the first place. At times they overshare aspects of his life while also expecting you to know all the pieces that fill in the gaps. They make the same points over and over again just adding to the frustration of not moving on.

Visually the monkey animations looked fine for the most part. They weren’t anywhere near what The Planet of the Apes movies are doing now, but it gets the job done. The lighting crew does put a little too much into making the lighting so different that it ends up looking bad, especially during the yacht scene. I will say this movie has one of my favorite shots of the year, but it legitimately lasts less than three seconds. If they were trying to make this movie look like it was filmed for a VH1 documentary, they succeeded.

As far as the character of Robbie Williams portrayed in this film, he’s an unlikeable moron. He complains about his life but does nothing to fix it for many years. He does so many things that make him hateable, and none of it is redeemed. I would say that the biggest aspect of his life that made him this way was his dad, and he is the biggest crux of this story. I have no idea what is entirely real and what is fabricated, but most of it feels like it was done for dramatic and emotional effect. Most of what he does and how he behaves makes him very difficult to have sympathy for.

I couldn’t get over him being a monkey, didn’t like the music in general, and his life wasn’t all that exciting compared to any other musician. It felt like they were going for the record of most F words used in a movie but without making it funny or an endearing character trait.

Just like beans for breakfast, Robbie Williams will never work in America.

2.2/10