“heheh, monke. Funi monke moovy gud.”-Noah Bruns, in a sleep deprivation induced delirium.
Here are my general thoughts on the movie, for those who are interested but want to go in completely blind. It’s fucking amazing. Great music, great acting, great cinematography, great directing; this movie had my rapt attention from start to finish and I loved all of it. If you are even remotely interested in Better Man, you should watch it.
With all that said, like many Americans, before I learned about this movie, I didn’t know anything about Robbie Williams. In fact, when I first heard about him, I thought that the person had misspelled Robin William’s name. I had no interest in seeing this film.
And I seemed to not have been alone in that thought. Being slated for an early January release, Paramount appears to have not been confident in this film either. I can’t really blame them for that, though. Aside from the gimmick of “This snarky british popstar is a cgi chimpanzee”, this movie didn’t seem interesting. That idea was further reinforced by the trailers. I thought “There’s no shortage of Oscar bait influential musician bio-pics out right now I’ll probably pass on this one”. But then some clips started circulating online. Clips where Robbie Williams fights off the past versions of himself in a bloody battle that feels reminiscent of THE church scene in Kingsmen. Though, sadly, with no Lynard Skynard.
And that, combined with some…choice posts from Robbie Williams’s instagram, made me interested enough in him and this movie to watch it.
A real post from Robbie Williams’s real Instagram account.
Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/C-8JprIKSPn/?img_index=1
And I’m so glad it did.
As I’ve said, this movie is amazing. The choice to portray Williams as a drug addled monkey that’s made to preform is a great, if heavy handed, metaphor. But even setting that aside, while I can’t speak for everyone, I didn’t mind the cgi chimp interacting with the human actors as if he wasn’t, in fact, a cgi chimp. To be honest, I really enjoyed the monkey. It was weird and quirky, and most importantly of all, New. I pray that Hollywood doesn’t take this movies subpar performance as a sign to not do fucking weird shit with these musician bio-pics.
The narration of the film, done by Williams himself, was also a great addition. His snark, quick wit, and, well, cheeky-ness all shine through magnificently while also not overshadowing the performances in the scenes it’s in. The scene where a younger Williams is about to tell his mother that he failed his exams, but doesn’t because he learns that he got into the boy band that would be called “Take That”, is a prime example of this for me. Williams’s narration saying something to the effect of “And she[his mother] never found out I failed my exams. Until now. Sorry mum.” was very funny to me. However the narration isn’t overbearing, nor is the humor in the rest of the movie.
The story is incredibly solid. While I think that it is fairly predictable in the broad strokes, the execution of the narrative is exquisite. I do feel that there is a bit of a pacing issue following the Knebworth sequence, where the film seems to rush through Williams’s time in rehab and his repairing of the relationships he ruined. While it would’ve been honestly worse for the pacing if more time was spent on this part, I felt that it deserves mentioning.
In spite of its odd gimmick and sense of humor, this movie is shockingly emotional. Film is a collaborative art, and that shows in Better Man. The cgi chimp and the comedy left me emotionally disarmed and unprepared for when this movie decides to gut check the audience. As I said in the post about my relationship with Cyberpunk 2077; while I do get invested and immersed, I don’t get all that emotional when consuming media.
Better Man made me cry. It is a beautiful story about the price of success, about reconciliation, about imposter syndrome, and so much more. And it’s fun as all hell too. So here’s my advice; let Better Man entertain you. If nothing else, you might add a few new songs to your playlists, because holy hell will these tunes get stuck in your head. Rock, DJ is still stuck in my head DAYS after seeing this thing. DAYS.