Well, here we are with theatrical movie #76 for 2024, not a bad tally for these post-pandemic times. Is it a worthy valediction for the year? Well, the news that Michael Gracey, director of near-universally-adored cheesy wotsit The Greatest Showman, has made another movie is undeniably news. His only other project since the Jackman-starring diversity barndance has been a documentary about Pink (though he was briefly attached to Rocketman as well), so you would be forgiven for assuming Gracey is on course to become a specialist in films focusing on music and musicians. However, you would be wrong, for his latest project is Better Man, a look at the life of Robbie Williams. (Oh, ha ha, he hee, I got you that time.)

There are of course standard rules of engagement for this sort of thing. Robbie Williams is a bit of an outlier when it comes to being a subject for a film in this vein, as he is not dead and even seems to still be quite active as a performer (not really having noticed anything he's done in the last fifteen years or so I assumed he had retired).

Nevertheless, the film sticks pretty close to the normal format, opening with the youthful Williams' formative years in Stoke-on-Trent, very much in the sway of his father (Steve Pemberton), a policeman and frustrated cabaret singer. He soon discovers a great natural talent for showing off and messing about, which leads to a successful audition when pop impresario Nigel Martin-Smith (Damon Herriman), whom the film describes, 'for legal reasons', as a very nice man, is putting together a new boy band.

Yes, it is the dawn of Take That, with all the potential for acrimony and humiliation that entails. Actually, for those of us who are (roughly speaking) contemporaries of Robbie Williams, there is something oddly cheering about revisiting the popular culture of the 1990s, even in the slightly pantomimic form that it takes in this film. As well as Take That, people turn up playing members of All Saints and Oasis; all that's really missing for the set are Damon and Justine and possibly a brace of Spice Girls.

Which is not to say there isn't a little bit of editing of history going on here, at least implicitly – Williams' big hit 'Angels', which came very early in his solo career, isn't performed or even alluded to until a dramatically appropriate point in the story – he's still depicted as struggling in his career when All Saints have their number one with 'Never Ever', when he was actually a fixture of the top ten at the time.

The film proceeds at a brisk trot through all of this, but even as Williams' apparently epoch-defining gig at Knebworth approaches (Williams never misses a chance to virtually scream at the camera that this was the biggest music event in British history), he becomes increasingly troubled – could it in fact be the case that enormous fame and all that comes with it is not guaranteed to make a person happy?

Yeah, well, the film won't win any prizes for profundity but I suppose I learned a thing or two, albeit mainly about Robbie Williams' love life. The film adopts an amusingly no-damns-given approach to the feelings of some of the other people featured in it: Gary Barlow is reportedly quite cross about how he's been depicted in the film, and other people with possible cause for disgruntlement include Liam and Noel, most members of the management stratum of the British music industry, and the Stoke-on-Trent tourist board.

The film is also lifted a notch or two by a certain visual inventiveness and energy, particularly in the musical sequences – these tend to favour Williams' solo work over things written by Gary Barlow, quelle surprise. I suppose this has its most obvious expression in the way that Robbie Williams himself is portrayed throughout the film by a CGI chimpanzee.

This is, to put it mildly, a somewhat curious creative decision. Williams himself has said it's because he always feels less evolved than other people, but I wonder if it isn't just cheaper than digitally de-aging the actual singer and less distracting for the audience than having a new face playing someone so very famous and familiar. I mean, it's not a bad choice, I think – the fact you're constantly bombarded with bizarre images like Steve Pemberton singing a duet with a baby chimp means the film is always operating in a non-naturalistic mode which is usually fertile territory for musicals.

There aren't quite enough song sequences for this to qualify as a full-blown jukebox musical, though, and the ones that are here are a mixture of diegetic and non-diegetic – there are scenes depicting Take That and Williams performing while on tour, but also some more creative production numbers. The biggest of these is a supposedly-single-take performance of 'Rock DJ', soundtracking the rise of Take That to fame (despite the fact it's a Williams solo song released nearly a decade later) – technically very impressive on every level, though, with lavish CGI and dozens of dancers.

Even so. . . it's only Williams who gets the CGI-animal treatment, even though there are surely various candidates for this kind of treatment in the film (the co-spousal unit and I whiled away a pleasant few minutes wondering what kind of primates we would have used to represent the rest of Take That). This immediately marks him out as different and special, compared to everyone else, but the film is pitching the idea that this just reflects his self-image problems, seeing himself as somehow lesser or lacking, somehow unworthy of all his success.

This all strikes me as just a little bit disingenuous, a plea for sympathy from someone who's worth over four hundred million quid (a couple of which I suspect I've just given him through going to see his movie in the first place). Oh well – it's not the most self-regarding or solipsistic celebrity biopic ever made, I suppose. It's enjoyable, colourful stuff, sort of charmingly off-the-wall, and never tries too hard to convince you that it bears much resemblance to things that actually happened.

Awix

06.01.24 Front Page

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