Better Man 4.5 stars☆☆☆☆☆

The highs, lows and eventual triumph of singer-songwriter Robbie Williams, as portrayed by a chimp.

Better Man certainly brings back musical memories, though rather than the nostalgia-fest one might expect they force us to face the uncomfortable truth: as the real Robbie Williams belted out Angels from the stage and thousands of us sang it back to him, we were having a much better time than he was.

I clearly remember the moment – in a field, somewhere in the late-mid-90s – that I realised Williams had gone from being seen as a musical embarrassment to a massive solo act. Robbie was about to perform and a tsunami of twentysomething men surged past me to the front, not to mock him but to sing along.

Mockery was what Robbie had suffered since he became famous in his mid-teens, so even in an entertainment world that claims to champion a comeback kid the Robbie Renaissance was both special and – to a jaded, cynical ’90s audience – unlikely. After five years in Take That, gyrating in plastic chaps with the boyband curtains haircut that I confidently predicted would never come back into fashion (sorry, Jack Grealish), Robbie had been fired, and started hanging around bad boys Oasis like a beribboned miniature poodle who’s been kicked off the show circuit and headed straight for a couple of snarling Rottweilers.

Watching this and much of the rest of his career recreated in Better Man from the other side of the velvet rope (admittedly with Robbie as a chimp not a poodle) is chastening, as the constricting horrors of Williams’ depression and addictions are laid bare, leading to career and family lows and the destruction of his relationship with his fiancée, All Saints singer Nicole Appleton (sweetly played by Raechelle Banno). It’s a trajectory that we see has its roots in his Stoke childhood, where the support he gets from his mum Janet (Kate Mulvaney) and loving gran Betty (Alison Steadman) is threatened by his flighty father (a brilliantly ambivalent Steve Pemberton) and local mean kids.

Better Man rattles through 20 years of the ups and downs of Williams’ life, his demons multiplying at the same rate as his opportunities, as he is constantly dragged down by his belief that success is other people’s approval. As his world grows (fans, awards, love, and eventually the pinnacle, a sell out show at Knebworth) the Roberts, Robs and Robbies from his past continue to accumulate, threatening to derail everything.

The key to Robbie’s successes and failures is his father Peter Conway. A comic on the fringes of showbiz who instils in his son a love of Sinatra while fragmenting the boy’s self-esteem, Peter eventually abandons his family for slightly brighter lights elsewhere. Peter says that to be famous you have to have “it”. But while Hollywood loves both a redemption arc and a singsong, it’s impossible to ignore that “it” is not enough on its own. And like many films lit by the bright, brittle lights of the entertainment industry, in Better Man sadness leeches into even the happiest moments; not just for its star, whose trials and travails are well-known, but for the many would-be Robbies with “it” who still won’t have got even as far as Peter the glorious night he wins a fiver for a set in a working men’s club.

Better Man is inventive and bold, but after weeks of online discourse it is also pleasingly surprising (it was written and directed by The Greatest Showman‘s Michael Gracey). Not just a succession of recreated starry stage performances, among the set pieces, fantasy sequences and flashing paparazzi bulbs Better Man is often small scale, the Take That years particularly subdued as they bring to life the cheap, back room reality of British fame in the 1990s. And if you’re worried Robbie Williams as a chimp will be distracting, it soon seems not so much off-the-wall as necessary. Robbie’s story is brutal but it’s also common; how else to get people’s attention?  It still could, combined with the real Williams’ over-explanatory voiceover, have been too much, but it isn’t. The quality of the motion capture is superb; the loneliness and confusion on little Robert’s chimp face as his father leaves is devastating.

Better Man has bombed in America, where Williams was never that successful (maybe they should have called it A Complete Unknown over there) but you don’t have to be a Robbie fan to enjoy it. Though I suspect the clip of late night TV show The Hitman And Her, showcasing bandmate Jason Orange’s pre-Take That dancing career, will only be appreciated by a few (ie me).

I’d argue this is the musical for people who don’t really like musicals because who just starts singing in real life anyway (answer, singers): the rightly viral Rock DJ, performed by the whole band across Regent Street at night; Williams fighting his demons to Let Me Entertain You, finally finding the warrior inside him years after his gran brought King Arthur alive with a bathtime story; little Robert’s heartbreaking rendition of Feel in the dark street. (sung by Carter J Murphy and Pemberton, Feel is the Williams hit that most embodies songwriter Guy Chambers’ view that “songs are only valuable if they cost you something”.)

The tightly choreographed Rock DJ (actually a Williams release from 2000) is the highlight, delivering in spades the joy the band feel on getting a record deal, re-energised after 18 draining months on the road. Take That fans will recognise what we should probably call their “iconic looks” throughout the song: matching blue suits from the 1994 Brit awards, the Everything Changes-era white trousers and shirts, the boxing gear, and at the end the trapper hat and furry coat from Back For Good.

Seeing them one after the other seems to chronicle the lifecycle of a boyband too: from normal high street clothes moving to identical suits, then the all-white outfits (each slightly different to represent their slightly different imposed personalities), and ending with them stealing hats and coats from passers-by so they no longer look the same. It’s Fermi’s Paradox of 20th century boybands: how many destroyed themselves before they had enough clout to insist they dress themselves?

Rock DJ is an absolute triumph: for the fizz of ideas, for the excellent Jonno Davis motion capture, for the sheer gall… but also for Chimp Robbie. With his nascent songwriting efforts soon to be belittled by Gary Barlow (Jake Simmance) himself, for a few minutes in 1991 Williams has all of Take That singing his song, and he hasn’t even written it yet.

The ending:

Knebworth – the gig that meant the most to Robbie before he achieved it – turns out to be the defining moment in his journey. Singing Let Me Entertain You, he sees past Robbies in the crowd, eventually jumping in and fighting them in a huge battle. 

After the event he turns his life around. He goes to rehab, and we see him at a group meeting. He also apologises to the people he feels he has wronged, including Gary Barlow (he leaves a giant watermelon carved with a sorry message outside Barlow’s front door – Robbie had taken a watermelon with him from the same house when the band fired him); Nicole Appleton (with the blessing of Liam Gallagher, her by-then partner, who touchingly sticks his finger up at Robbie when he drops her home); and even his deceased grandma (he drags a TV to his nan’s grave to watch comedy show The Two Ronnies). Finally, Robbie – now calm, proud of himself and in control – performs at the Royal Albert Hall. His mum and dad are in the audience, and Robbie invites his dad on stage, where they sing My Way together. Also in the audience are the past Robbies, now also proud and accepting of him.

That Rock DJ scene in full:

Watch the official Better Man trailer: