If you have been following the movie BETTER MAN, chances are you know by now that the movie is a music biography on the life of Robbie Williams where his entire performance is a computer generated monkey. Or chimpanzee. Or ape. Or whatever you want to call it.
This factoid did tend to slip past some film festival descriptions early in its journey, however. A bit of backstory. During last fall’s Toronto International Film Festival, my mind as per usual is always racing over the 11 days (in addition to the two weeks before watching advance screening copies). It’s FULL of movies. Day after day, I am hiding in film festival venues in Toronto instead of being outside and enjoying the weather. My #1 mission is to find awesome movies but also to keep track of the buzz and reactions to earlier screenings. You simply can’t see every movie and if you are fully committed to the festival, it’s more about getting the most out of your time based on the movie schedule.
On one of the very last days of the festival last September I had a public ticket booked for a screening of BETTER MAN not knowing much about it. In fact, I scheduled the movie as it fit best into the schedule that day. I was telling myself that I should see the follow-up movie to the director of THE GREATEST SHOWMAN and I knew Robbie Williams and that it could likely be a talking-head, clip show doc of which I had already seen at the festival about Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and Andre Bocelli, among others. The pull for the director of THE GREATEST SHOWMAN was a good pull. As the screening started, there was a weird video introduction to the movie where Robbie appears on screen with director Michael Gracey and he remarks in a strange way that Michael’s idea to showcase himself as a CG monkey was unique. The audience around me didn’t know this was happening, nor did any of the festival description mention this either (the only image from the official festival program was a shot of Gracey on set with the real Williams). A verbal reaction was heard throughout the mammoth auditorium at the Scotiabank Theatre Toronto and some unease in the audience. Some started to walk out in the first 10 minutes.
I was also in the midst of catching up on a LOT of movies that were getting rave reviews from previous screenings. TIFF is also about business as I also do some light work in film releases and I also do some programming for a little film series of my own. I got a taste of the movie and at the time, I wasn’t feeling it. With something like 65 movies logged at that point, I was just not interested. So I walked out of the movie only to see a great movie called MY SUNSHINE from Japan, which wound up being one of my favourites of the festival. My mind was full of movies, it was close to the end of the festival….I admit, my brain isn’t in the best of moods at that time. And then cut to last December’s Whistler Film Festival and I wound up slipping into the last half of the picture after watching another screening….and I had a much different reaction to the picture.
I mention all of this because, dear reader, I was wrong. I was wrong in walking out of that screening at Toronto and as I watched the final section I knew that there was more to this bio-pic, and made a massive mental note to go see this movie right away on release. So after all of that, I FINALLY sat down at a full screening all the way from beginning to end just recently. And let me tell you that I am so happy I have come all the way around to discover that BETTER MAN is an absolute dream of a motion picture that is mostly rock-insanity and an absolutely brave and fearless piece of art. Yes, you can make the common cliche comparison that “It’s ROCKETMAN meets PLANET OF THE APES” but this brilliant movie does something even better, in that it uses its chimpanzee-as-lead character to get you to look beyond the standard bio-pic and channels the soul of its lead, Robbie Williams and all of his ups and downs from a very unique career trajectory.
There’s a lot to unpack here. Robbie started off as growing up poor in London and eventually finding his way to auditioning in the boy-band Take That. What started off with the band playing in gay clubs lead to FINALLY finding fans with girls and breaking out as a popular British group (Take That didn’t have AS much pull over in North America, but they did have some hits). This goes on for a while until Robbie eventually breaks away from the group after much substance abuse and relationship problems, but DOES succeed on his own.
Few sequences in movies have wowed me in the way that Take That celebrates its eventual signing with a studio. Their hit song ROCK DJ starts warming up on the soundtrack and it leads to one of the most wonderful song and dance numbers I have EVER seen in the movies. In this sequence, which I would guess is a bunch of takes stitched together to create one long flowing image, moves from London’s Regent Street and inside and outside buildings all to represent the band’s immediate British outbreak, made all the more brilliant with the fact we are seeing a monkey version of Robbie perform right alongside a younger version of the band. This four minute sequence is such a triumph of visual and sonic design and this is so thrilling to see for this movie buff, and congratulations to Gracey and his team for pulling off a sequence that was NOT easy to make and is the reason I love the movies. It reminds me of a grand Bollywood music number but taken to new heights.
And it doesn’t end there. Once Robbie splits from the band and goes off on his own, the movie showcases his inner demons as ape characters looking back on himself. When his substance abuse and relationships fall apart, this is also represented as visual effects, many of which take a dreamlike feel (one particular shot of Robbie being trapped under water is absolutely breathtaking). There is also a powerful bond between Robbie and his dad which is explored so beautifully here and comes to a tear-inducing finale. This is just a few of the many wonderful moments and I don’t want to spoil the rest for you.
With all of this, I want to talk again about the use of Robbie as a CG monkey. The more you look at it and how the movie uses its visual effects, it makes more sense. Many sequences in the movie show Robbie’s personal demons represented as himself who are almost always looming just far away from him ready to pounce. In another breathtaking sequence later in the movie, Robbie takes the stage infant of a massive audience, yells “For the next two hours….your ass is MINE!” and the resulting sequence which leads into a brawl with his personal demons is another moment that absolutely took my breath away, in addition to many other sequences where we see his rise and fall represented with visual effects work, all at the service of getting into Robbie’s mind and seeing how it all ticks.
This is not an easy movie to sell, either (again, remember that I even walked out of it at a major film festival) and its recent box office failure is almost understandable in a way. Even many North American audiences may not remember Robbie or Take That or even be put off by the marketing work. Yet, I plead with you, give BETTER MAN a chance. I have had such a personal journey with this movie myself and I came out on the winning side of it all, in many thanks to the Rock DJ sequence which I think is one of the best musical sequences EVER in the movies. This movie IS finding an audience and fans who take the chance on it, and on final evaluation BETTER MAN absolutely took over my soul with its fearless creative freedom and eagerness to entertain in the best possible way. This has all the makings of a cult-classic in its future when it does eventually find its audience. And it will.
BETTER MAN is now playing in cinemas. Don’t miss it.