Better Man

It properly delves into its subject’s erratic persona, using the musical segments to advance the story instead of as mandatory breaks in the action. The result is one of the most thoughtfully constructed movies about a musician I’ve seen in years.

While the movie is drawn from Robbie Williams’ life, it’s better to think of it as a fantasy feature. Michael Gracey plays with image and emotion over facts, telling a story through bold, expressive, visually startling sequences.



Of course, the story arc eventually curves up, but the movie is quite the one-off: a crowd-pleaser that feels like singing along to a psychiatric report.

In the end, it is overlong, it is indulgent, and it is essentially foolish, but for all that, it is much more rewarding and entertaining than I expected, and damn it if that central idea actually doesn't work.

Doesn’t try to narrate the arc of Robbie Williams' story so much as ride the emotional waves of it.

If any miracles are performed here, they belong to Gracey, who in one swoop has managed to reinvent the biopic, up the ante on the ongoing revival of movie musicals and raise the legacy of Robbie Williams to a level that feels fully earned.

This is an infectious and fun biopic. It really connects on an emotional level.

The fact that none of the other performers comment on his appearance makes it all the more curious why the technique is used at all, and I found myself not even noticing it after about 10 minutes.

So I can’t really tell you if Better Man succeeds as a musical biopic since I don’t really care about the music or the musician involved. I can tell you that it kinda-sorta succeeds as a deranged vision of celebrity excess.

Releasing a $110-million musical biopic about Williams in a country long indifferent to his talents seems an utterly mad undertaking. Especially since the star of the picture — the one playing Williams — is, unapologetically, a monkey.