"Better Man" Review

 If there is a genre as well-worn as superhero, horror, or science fiction movies, it's the musical biopic. From Walk The Line (about Johnny Cash), Bohemian Rhapsody (Freddie Mercury), One Love (Bob Marley), Coal Miner's Daughter (Loretta Lynn), Walk Hard (Dewey Cox*), or current Oscar contender A Complete Unknown (Bob Dylan), recapping the life of an important musical figure is usually a pretty safe bet for commercial and critical, even awards, acclaim.

But what if the subject is a pop star who was in a British boy band in the early-1990s during the interregnum between New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys and N*Sync and was massively successful everywhere BUT America, probably due to grunge, alternative, and angry female music topping the charts here and our own pop stars arising during the turn of the Millennium? Oh yeah, and what if the movie has an anthropomorphic chimpanzee as its lead?

What happened was box office disaster as Better Man absolutely cratered at the global box office, grossing about $20M on reported $110M budget. It even flopped in England! And it wasn't a bad movie with critics and audiences giving positive marks 90% of the time. People who saw it liked it.

Telling the life story of Robbie Williams (if you're saying, "Who?" then you see the problem), we are given the musical-biopic-by-numbers template filled in with all the predictable checkpoints. Modest upbringing with father abandoning family for illusory fame in his youth? Check. Finding fame by joining boy band Take That before his boozing and drugging gets him sacked? Check. Struggling to find his songwriting voice and having a tempestuous relationship with girl group All Saints member Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno, with Kayleigh McKnight providing singing vocals)? Check. Ultimately pulling off the biggest concerts in UK history at the time? Chickity-check! Been there, seen that.

The question in the aftermath of the flop was why did they spend nine-figures on a VFX-driven biopic of such a figure of limited appeal; why not just make a straight biopic for probably less than half the cost? A: Because that would've also failed because Williams simply isn't ubiquitous enough and it would've been Just Another Musical Biopic.

In this case, the gimmick is what elevates the threadbare details into something just bonkers and entertaining to watch. VFX juggernaut Weta FX brings their experience from the providing the simians from the modern Planet of the Apes series to bear converting the performance capture of Jonno Davies (Williams and Adam Tucker provides singing vocals; Carter J. Murphy does Young Robbie's voice) into an absolutely convincing representation of a pop idol chimpanzee. That nobody ever remarks on his appearance also sells the premise as it represents how Williams viewed himself.

Director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman, which I liked though too many of the songs sounded like New Zealand tourism commercial jingles) presents the tale with energetic, dynamic camera work which enhances the verisimilitude of what we're seeing with sweeping musical numbers - the massive "Rock DJ" oner on Regent Street is epic - and gritty handheld moments, while still calming things down to let the monkey emote. (All of which made Weta FX sweat as they had to recreate lens flares & cope with less-detail motion capture than they'd prefer at times as this Corridor Crew episode details.)

Gracey said that the reason he chose to represent Williams as a chimp was due to the musical biopic formula being so over-familiar. He was right about that, but the one thing that saved it from boring is what killed it at the box office. I remember when the trailer dropped, watching it and wondering why they were making a Robbie Williams biopic with a monkey? And so did everyone else. Which is too bad, though Weta did snag a Best Visual Effects Oscar nomination, which I think it should win because if Chimp Robbie doesn't work, the entire movie collapses.

Trying to break out of the formula is risky. Just as Better Man flopped, so did Piece by Piece, the documentary about Pharrell Williams which was done entirely with Lego animation. It appears that audiences either don't want something different or the marketing is failing on selling them on what's going on. But while the 23 credited executive producers lost their shirts and probably had to settle for dollar store cocaine (free band name!), hopefully it will be discovered by audiences when it hits streaming.

Score: 8/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.

* Yes, I know it was a mockumentary.