Better Man isn’t a music biopic — it’s a must-see fantasy spectacular

At least for American audiences, the film is a musical Best man It’s quite a hard sell. This is a strange project – a musical biopic with the main character was replaced by a CGI chimpanzeebuilt on the career of an international superstar and former boy band member, never really broke through in the States. Americans don’t share the rest of the world’s admiration for pop singer Robbie Williams, despite his 14 chart-topping albums, regular presence in the British tabloids and cheeky, viral music videos. (Note: This video alone has 107 million views, which isn’t even close his most viewed hit is “Angels.”) So the idea of ​​a biopic may not immediately appeal to American audiences, even if the “monkey protagonist” gimmick adds some intrigue.

But while the film is based on Williams’ life, it’s best to think of it as a fantasy film. Director Michael Gracey previously turned the career of P.T. Barnum’s exciting ultra-popular musical film The Greatest Showmanwhile keeping silent or revising much of the reality of Barnum’s life and work. Bye Best man gets closer to the truth about Williams’ story, it also plays with image and emotions, not factsespecially when it comes to music. Just as Gracie replaces Williams with a monkey for a variety of reasons (more on that in a moment), he invents and expands his character’s story. More importantly, however, he tells the story through fantasy sequences so bold, expressive and visually striking that the effects dominate the film.

Actor Johnno Davis plays Williams throughout the film for fun as he grows up as a smug, attention-hungry braggart in a tense working-class family. He got his first chance at national fame as a teenager when producer Nigel Martin-Smith (Damon Herriman) selected him to be part of his newly created boy band Take That, which was a huge success. (Time later described the fandom surrounding the group as “The ’90s version of Beatlemania.”)

What follows is the usual behind-the-scenes drama: depression, substance abuse, arrogance and alienation, rock bottom, recovery and rebirth. But the core beats don’t matter as much as the way Gracie portrays them, through bravura scenes of Williams and his cohorts navigating a spinning, mutating fantasy version of London’s Regent Street, or zombie-like hordes of paparazzi attacking Williams underwater. as standard directly from AquamanTrench fighting.

Best man is openly built more on Williams’ emotional experiences of his life than on a sober reconstruction of its events: apparently, he never actually fought 110,000 versions of himself in a bloody, over-the-top battle royale set to “Let me entertain you” At the very least, chronology nitpickers might get angry at the way music throughout Williams’ career is used to represent emotional moments from vastly different parts of his story. But the full-fledged fantasy approach allows Gracie to avoid the usual vexing questions about fidelity to truth in a biopic. When your protagonist is an ape operating in a human world, how can you overlook that the approach is more based on image and feel than factual accuracy?

This central idea of ​​Robbie Williams as an ape-man among men gives Gracie additional visual appeal, but also serves as a powerful metaphor. He and Williams gave different reasons for this approach: in the film itself, Williams simply says that he always considered himself “a little less evolved” than other people. In other interviews, Gracie spoke of wanting to distance the audience from reality so that they It’s better to come to terms with the unreality of the musicalor that there just needs to be a trick to avoid making another generic biopic.

And ahead of the film’s release, Williams and Gracie released a video clip in which they offer a completely different reason: Gracie says he was inspired by Williams’ complaints about being “dragged on stage to perform like a monkey” and decided to make this idea literal and tangible.

But beyond these excuses, imagining Best manthe plot as a literal animal, a being different from everyone around him, allows Gracie to build on Williams’ themes of alienation and feelings of separation. Is the obstacle his bottomless thirst for attention, the way he struggles with drugs and alcohol while his boy band peers seem physically and emotionally healthier, the way his fame alienates him from his family and former friends, or simply The way he constantly yearns for the approval of his father, who is busy pursuing his own fame, Williams is separated from the world. Framing the film around the most self-deprecating, instinctual version of his self-image emphasizes the essence of each frame without the need for exposition.

There is also a destructive, animalistic side to the image of a monkey. Wētā FX, the special effects studio behind the Planet of the Apes films, gives Williams an expressive and believable chimpanzee face and detailed chimpanzee pelt, but keeps the body language and physicality largely human. However, there is an atavistic danger in Williams’ moments of anger or fear on screen, as he beats his chest or bares his fangs. At such moments, he feels much more dangerous to those around him and much less in control of the situation than any human character.

All this, plus the ambitiously wild musical sequences, leaves Best man as a film-spectacle worthy of sharing multiplexes and audiences with Wicked. It appears to be aimed more at fans of immersive, Wētā-centric fantasy worlds like the Planet of the Apes or Lord of the Rings films than at fans of pop history or even Williams himself. (Netflix has four-part documentary about Williams’ life and career for those looking for a more fact-based approach.) At the end, viewers may be curious to learn more about Williams as an artist and person, or delve deeper into his discography.

But Best man The experience is more like watching an outstanding Bollywood musical or a spectacular Baz Luhrmann production, for example Moulin Rouge! than watch the series Behind the music. Most musicals translate emotion into song. This step goes even further, turning emotion into a bold central trick. It’s experimental and explosive. Even for those not invested in Williams’ work or unaware of his career, it’s worth a watch just to see Gracie fill the screen with energy and verve, with mesmerizing performances designed to dazzle the audience’s senses and ensure they leave singing. .

Best man is now in cinemas.