Better Man

By Joanna Langfield

Thought “A Complete Unknown” was too traditional? Well, have I got a movie for you.

Based on the rise and fall and rise again of British pop icon Robbie Williams, director Michael Gracey has served up another popular music biography that follows the established route. We see the struggle, the success, the self destruction and the coming to terms that has been the story for many a star and, of course, the movies made about them. But this time, there’s a twist. This time, our boy isn’t a boy. He’s an ape.

Don’t get all nervous. He’s a VFX creation. And a good one. Which, actually, might make some people nervous about the future of filmmaking. But let us not digress. The fact remains that this twist, assumingly to de-personify the performer into a Primate who’s desperate to please the un-pleasable, works surprisingly well. Our initial “hey, what’s this” anxieties evaporate as we follow the familiar. Which may be a life (and art) lesson for all of us.

Jonno Davies meets the remarkable challenge of playing the man behind the chimp. As Andy Serkis and a few others have done before, he conveys the guts of the character through body physicality and, more interestingly, eye “acting”, as it were. Watch the eyes: they say more than almost any head tilt or shoulder slump. Nice work, too, from Steve Pemberton, who co-stars as Williams’s father, a performer who never made the big time he truly believed he deserved.

Perhaps the greatest accomplishment here is how Gracey gracefully handles the CGI challenges of the star he creates as easily as he meshes him with more standard, and successful, entertainment. The story will tear at anyone who’s ever dealt with imposter syndrome, the seamless, fluid musical numbers are a treat. Even as they are performed by a creation of many imaginations.