Better Man (2024) – A Different Man

Released: 26th December 2024
Seen: 24th February 2025

Biopics in general have never been my thing, mostly because they’re pretty much all the same. A performer gets famous, does a lot of drugs, pisses off a lot of people before finally pulling through and becoming the superstar that was worthy of making a biopic about. It’s all the same and only ever becomes interesting based on the lead actor’s performance. It’s such a predictable formula you can almost guess what song will be performed after each drug-taking montage if you know enough of the main musician’s hit songs. The only biopic in recent memory that was actually good enough to make me enjoy it would be Rocketman which took the life of Elton John and turned it into a lavish musical that ignored the constraints of linear time to present the story of Elton’s life. I’ve been genuinely waiting for someone to look at that movie and steal what made it work to see if it could be replicated, imagine my surprise when Take That bad boy Robbie Williams did that exact thing and threw in a CGI monkey just for the fucking hell of it.

Better Man details the rise and fall and then rise again of Robbie Williams, showing his formative years and his time in the boy band Take That along with his descent into drug and alcohol addiction. As Robbie tries to rebuild his career as a solo artist, he has to not only fight against his own addictions but he also has to deal with his severe mental health issues that fill him with the constant voice of doubt that he’ll be able to do any of this… oh, also, Robbie Willims is presented in the film as a CGI monkey without them ever turning it into a cheap joke, something that it could have quite easily been since it’s a goddamn monkey running around in people clothes, snorting lines of cocaine and occasionally breaking out into a chorus of Let Me Entertain You.

While comparing Better Man to Rocketman is a little bit much (for all the praise I’m about to give this movie, it’s nowhere near the quality of Rocketman but largely because Rocketman was perfect), it undeniably uses the best elements from that approach to telling an artist’s story and uses them spectacularly. The way that the music is used in this film is stellar, cleverly pulling all of Robbie’s songs out of the time they were made and choosing to use them instead when it would work best for the narrative. As an example, Feel was a song that Robbie when he was in his mid-20s but it’s a better song used for an emotional moment when he’s a child trying to deal with his father abandoning the family. Creative music uses like this allow the film to transcend the biopic genre and enter the world of a full-blown musical, meaning everything is heightened just enough that it allows us to see clearer inside the mind of Robbie Williams.

It also helps that Better Man is just expertly filmed and presented, tons of great visual contrast and bright colours really let the story soar and make the core gimmick of the film actually work. If Better Man looked drab or like your average biopic then the monkey element would feel weird but with the way everything else is heightened so much it actually feels normal. That heightened visual style actually allows the film to indulge in some of the most incredible visuals that have been in one of these films in a long time, there’s a reason they showed a lot of the Rock DJ number in promotional material and that’s because it’s an absolutely jaw-dropping one take shot that goes through a major London street with some incredible choreography and stunning effects work that blows the roof off the building by the time it’s done. You can’t help but be swept away by how good every musical number looks and how much has gone into ensuring each one fits the emotional moment it’s placed in.

Of course, all of this revolves around the star of Better Man, and the reason this is an Oscar nominee, the CGI monkey. What’s wild is how quickly you adapt to the monkey being the star of the film, it just feels like it blends into the reality of the world and with the expert visual effects artists giving their all you actually feel every emotion of the story. Typing the sentence “The monkey does a line of cocaine” should illicit a darkly funny image, like it’s from the sequel to Cocaine Bear that I dream of every night, but through the talented effects artists work, it’s a low point in Better Man for the character and you can feel it through the finely tuned performance that’s been presented by the effects team. Sure, the effects team did a lot more than just that damn monkey, they’re basically carrying the film around making the hyperreality work from scene to scene but their biggest job is making a believable walking talking monkey that can sing, dance and call people cunts and damnit if they didn’t pull that off. It’s a stunning bit of digital magic that makes Better Man better than it has any right to be.

Earlier on I did compare this film to Rocketman and I do genuinely mean that as a compliment but there is a caveat, which is partially where the negative side of this comes in… Rocketman was about Elton John, Better Man is about Robbie Williams and let’s be honest and admit that Robbie Williams is nowhere near as interesting or has as many great songs as Elton. Perhaps the biggest issue with the film is that it’s about Robbie Williams, a figure that’s certainly known by British and Australian audiences but (and the box office might back me up on this) isn’t as big as the film wants to play him as. I feel like even Robbie would admit that there’s a large part of Better Man where he’s just an annoying twat and it’s hard to root for an annoying twat when he spends an hour of your time twatting about annoyingly. Basically, if you were not already a big fan of Robbie Williams, chances are good Better Man isn’t going to be a film that will convert you to him. There’s something admirable about letting yourself be presented like this, but it gets grating at points.

It also does the big thing that Rocketman did that just dragged it down, namely acting as therapy for the main performer. Sometimes this works well, scenes where an alternate version of the Robbie Williams monkey pops up to tell him he’s worthless is a great visualisation of his mental struggles, as is the climactic moment in the final act during Let Me Entertain You but a lot of it is just kind of buggered up by the constant narration by Robbie himself as though the film doesn’t trust the audience to follow along with the story it’s telling. It’s like Robbie made this film to talk to his past demons which can work, but there are several points where it pushes its luck (which was already on the edge because of the whole “Monkey” thing)

Better Man is definitely not going to be for everyone. If you’re someone who doesn’t like Robbie Williams’s music, this isn’t going to change your mind on him. However, if you’re a fan of his or just indifferent to him, this is a pretty great biopic about his life presented in a way that is unique enough to push through the barriers that are normally presented around that genre. There’s an undeniable charm offensive that works throughout the film, it’s the combination of first-class effects and an attitude of “Fuck it, let’s go” actually make for a good time. It shouldn’t work, it honestly shouldn’t, this film should be bad and dumb on the level of Cats or something because its core gimmick is so dumb that, in a fair world, it’d fail horribly but Better Man defied the odds and did things its way and it ended up being pretty damn good in the process.