Robbie Williams is just a lad from Stoke-on-Trent. He mentions this in every press interview, leaning his body forwards to show he’s on the offensive. He is making sure we know that whatever vitriol gets slung his way, he is in on the joke.
Robin Williams played by a CGI monkey
In Better Man, the biopic of his life, Williams is played by a CGI (Computer generated Image) monkey and nobody is in on the joke. Even as audiences walk out of the cinema they are still asking questions, puzzling it out as they queue for the loo.
Nobody knows why it works, but it does. Robbie Williams doesn’t know why it works. He always says: “Everyone agrees it makes sense, but none of us could tell you why.”
Director Michael Gracey made his name with The Greatest Showman, a huge commercial success filled with big budget visual effects and polished gaudiness. In this sense, Robbie Williams is the perfect subject, a man who has been the king of faking it since the age of 15.
We watch Williams grow from a Stoke youngster into a pop star
The film opens with that surprisingly gentle Stoke accent we all know well from years of listening to his songs. We are first introduced to a hyperactive youngster whose cheeky antics are familiar to anyone who has met a little boy, so much so that you barely register the fact he is a monkey.
We see his gran, loyal and loving, and his mum, wrestling to hold the family together. We see his dad, letting everyone down while little Robert gazes adoringly at his mediocre Sinatra impression. It would all be a little insipid, but that big CGI gap-tooth smile that lets us know we’re simply at the slow moving stages of a rollercoaster ride that’s about to let it rip.
And so it does, dragging us into the underworld of 90s rave culture. For those of us born too late to know the Take That origin story, it is fabulous to see them finding their feet in the British gay scene, pumping out moves taken from the ballrooms of New York.
Alcohol and drugs addiction
We see Williams spiral as alcohol and drugs compensate for his feelings of inadequacy, and watch the singer berate himself as he plays out his most shameful moments. Our hearts dance as a troupe of 500 (yes, 500) dancers take over Regent Street, complete with pogo sticks and gumballs. And then our hearts come crashing into our stomachs as he relates the heartbreak of abortion, addiction, rejection and bereavement.
Williams narrates the movie in a familiar language of therapists that could feel a little trite if it weren’t so compellingly honest. He was dealing with the same issues that men from post-industrial towns in the north of England have been dealing with for generations: abandonment, insecurity, undiagnosed neurodivergence, substance abuse, and not having the language to be vulnerable with the people they love. Clearly Williams can see this in the men in his own life, as well as himself, and this film is in some ways a love letter to those brethren who he still identifies with back in Stoke-on-Trent.
Feel the fear and sadness
This musical is a ritzy, glitzy, hammy, spammy party piece and you should be prepared for that. But you should also be ready to feel the visceral fear and sadness that a lost little boy from Stoke feels when he is faced with a terrifying world of fame and scandal.
Be ready, as well, to take it a lot more personally than you might expect. We all feel like monkeys in suits sometimes.
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