Better Man
Mar. 8th, 2026 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficHere's my cold take: Better Man is a really good movie.
Yes, the Robbie Williams biopic starring a CGI chimpanzee. Yes, the legendary bomb. Yes, about the pop star who's famous everywhere in the world but the US. It's a good movie.
It is in some ways a very standard music biopic--star comes from nothing, achieves fame way too fast way too young, becomes addicted to drugs, finds his way to sobriety and reconciliation. But the choice of making Robbie a chimp really, really works, because once you've accepted that bit of surreality at the center of the film, you don't question all the other creative choices--you're not sitting there wondering if the actor is doing a good impersonation of the person, or singing themselves, or if the film is accurate to real events. You are looking at a chimp. Obviously it's not real.
What it is, is an attempt to visualize what it felt like for Robbie Williams to rocket to fame at fifteen and immediately pick up a raging cocaine habit. Robbie Williams thinks of himself as a performing monkey. This is not a subtle film. This is a movie about what it's like to hate yourself.
So yeah--a tough watch (trigger warnings for suicide, drug addiction, pregnancy loss, and a shocking amount of graphic violence for a biopic), but very good. Recommend.
Yes, the Robbie Williams biopic starring a CGI chimpanzee. Yes, the legendary bomb. Yes, about the pop star who's famous everywhere in the world but the US. It's a good movie.
It is in some ways a very standard music biopic--star comes from nothing, achieves fame way too fast way too young, becomes addicted to drugs, finds his way to sobriety and reconciliation. But the choice of making Robbie a chimp really, really works, because once you've accepted that bit of surreality at the center of the film, you don't question all the other creative choices--you're not sitting there wondering if the actor is doing a good impersonation of the person, or singing themselves, or if the film is accurate to real events. You are looking at a chimp. Obviously it's not real.
What it is, is an attempt to visualize what it felt like for Robbie Williams to rocket to fame at fifteen and immediately pick up a raging cocaine habit. Robbie Williams thinks of himself as a performing monkey. This is not a subtle film. This is a movie about what it's like to hate yourself.
So yeah--a tough watch (trigger warnings for suicide, drug addiction, pregnancy loss, and a shocking amount of graphic violence for a biopic), but very good. Recommend.
