- Robbie Williams portrays himself, but as a CGI chimpanzee, in his upcoming biopic Better Man.
- No, really.
- The film is helmed by Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) and premieres on Boxing Day.
Whoever had “Robbie Williams biopic where he’s a CGI monkey” on their 2024 bingo card, congratulations: you’ve won big today.
The first trailer for the pop star’s biopic, Better Man, has just dropped and it looks bananas.
Better Man covers Williams’ life from his childhood days; to joining the ionic Brit boyband Take That as a teenager; to truly breaking out with his hugely successful solo career (and all the dangers that level of fame brought about). All in all, it sounds like a fairly standard affair… except that he’ll be playing himself in the form of a CGI chimpanzee.
In the trailer, the man irreverently muses, “I’m one of the biggest pop stars in the world, but I’ve always seen myself a little less evolved.” Considering how wild Williams was during the very peak of his career, the chimp seems like an apt choice.
The film has been helmed by Michael Gracey, the director behind your mum’s favourite movie The Greatest Showman, so you can expect any musical set-pieces to look fantastic. Williams voices himself, while Jonno Davies has provided a motion-capture performance for the primate body double.
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Credit where credit is due, Robbie Williams and Michael Gracey are certainly doing something inventive here for an otherwise stale genre.
Over the past decade, music biopics have boomed in popularity, although the general results leave much to be desired. They’ve usually come across as calculated brand exercises rather than actual insights into their subject matter, never peaking past “Clap if you remember this.” Like Marvel movies for boomers. And far too many of them unintentionally replicate jokes from Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (minus the irony).
Even if Better Man ends up being structured like your average biopic, using a cartoon monkey opens up the possibility for a more off-beat and self-aware approach to scenes. Allowing Williams play himself (in a manner of speaking) also side-steps the not-quite-right impressions that hold back other movies in this sub-genre.
According to an early review of the film published on Indiewire: “You will see a monkey bleach its hair. You will see a monkey party with Oasis. You will see a monkey do unreasonable amounts of cocaine, stick a heroin needle in between the fur of its arm, and drive headlong into opposing traffic while shouting a pop song at the top of its monkey lungs.” If that doesn’t sell you on it, I don’t know what will.
Better Man swings into Australian cinemas on December 26th — you can watch the trailer above.
