A new musical from Michael Gracey, the director of The Greatest Showman, was always going to be a cinema event worth looking out for. However it did come as a bit of a surprise when it was announced that his next film would be a Robbie Williams biopic.
Better Man tells the story of Robert Williams rise to musical fame, he was later to be given the name Robbie as Robert just didn’t cut if as a name for an upcoming member of a boy band, from his childhood to pretty much the present day.
Along the way we follow him through his drug addiction, his less than happy relationship with his father (Steve Pemberton), who himself was a nightclub singer and a not very good one at that, to him joining Take That and his honest impressions of his fellow band members. Gary Barlow doesn’t come out of it very well at all.
The musical numbers, especially She’s The One where Williams dances with Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno) on a yacht, feel very similar, in terms of look and choreography, to the musical numbers in The Greatest Showman.
Much has been made in the media about the decision to have Williams depicted as a monkey and, after having seen the film, the decision works, for reasons that I won’t go into for fear of giving spoilers away, really well.
Better Man is just about as honest and open a biopic that you could wish to see, in fact Williams might be a bit too honest as he gives the viewer the impression that his life has been nothing but gloom and misery which I’m sure isn’t the case.
Other than being surprisingly dark, by the end you’ll feel as if you’ve sat through a therapy session between Williams and his councillor, Better Man is a terrific piece of cinema and comes highly recommended.