Better Man

OK, then, now there will be a series of the reviews in a very admired media.

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Not only about Better Man, so posting it here. FqtDaXHTqms

So, today is THE day!! Enjoy watching everyone!!! Fingers crossed! --- Local interviews about Better Man are started to appear as well. Now it's The Sun. XxbT9JTRD-g

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Better Man review – Robbie Williams becomes CGI chimp in surreal biopic A candid look at the toxic force of envy that drove his musical career but turned a talented musician into a deeply unhappy man. But why the CGI? Robbie Williams – only he is a chimp! This is a pretty trad music biopic, coming with the accepted U-shaped narrative arc of humble beginnings, big break, superstardom, drugs, drink, shallow sex, dark-night-of-the-soul slump and redemptive comeback, here topped off with an unendurably protracted performance of My Way at the Royal Albert Hall in London. But the whole thing is given a cheeky high-concept twist by portraying the singer as an ape – a shrieking, scowling, capering CGI chimp – while all around are humans. Actor Jonno Davies plays the part in motion capture and Williams himself supplies the voiceover. The idea supposedly comes from Williams’s fear that he is immature and unevolved, stranded emotionally for ever at the age he became famous: 15. And this chimp figure runs counter to his 2001 song Better Man, with its poignant, maybe Darwinian yearning for improvement: “As my soul heals the shame/I will grow through this pain/Lord, I’m doing all I can/To be a better man.” But, of course, it is an outrageous existential humblebrag – as a chimp, Robbie is superior to the boring humanoids: funnier, crazier, braver and more charismatic. Steve Pemberton plays Robbie’s unreliable old dad, Peter, a heartbreakingly unsuccessful Sinatra-adjacent lounge singer who broke Robbie’s heart by abandoning his family but inspired Robbie with a complicated Oedipal need to prove himself, imitate him, gain his attention and surpass him. Alison Steadman plays his adored nan, who always believed in him. Jake Simmance is Gary Barlow, whose songwriting professionalism earns Robbie’s grudging respect. We see young chimpy Robbie audition for hatchet-faced promoter Nigel Martin-Smith (Damon Herriman) to join Take That – and the screenplay from Simon Gleeson, Oliver Cole and Michael Gracey gives Williams’s voiceover some carefully droll material about the enduring need to be quite polite about Martin-Smith for legal reasons. As Martin-Smith, Herriman has the funniest line; over dinner, he tells the fresh-faced band to look around the table. “In five years’ time we’ll all hate each other – but we’ll be rich!” That is not quite what happens. Robbie’s substance-abusing antics get him expelled from the band; and he makes a bid for solo stardom with the help of his new girlfriend, Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno), while eaten up with jealousy for her band All Saints and their No 1 single. Songwriter Guy Chambers (Tom Budge) unlocks Robbie’s inner talent – and here again there is some interesting, legally constrained joking about Robbie and Guy going on beach holidays together. Robbie is fascinated and woundedly envious of Oasis’s colossal success and yearns for a massive Knebworth show of his own – and for his dad to love him. It is all watchably performed, but the chimp idea is not explored any further than simply making Robbie look like a chimp. We are not leading up to any Statue of Liberty on the beach moment; he just does what he would do anyway. As you gradually get used to him resembling a chimp, the ironising and surreal effect wears off, and the chimp face looks weirdly less compelling than Robbie’s vivid face, seen in pictures over the closing credits. The film is interestingly candid about the toxic, driving force of envy behind a musical career – something many music biopics omit – but in the end, however initially startling and amusing, Robbie-as-chimp feels like a distraction from his all-too-human unhappiness and talent. Better Man is in UK and Irish cinemas from 26 December. 3/5 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/dec/2...-surreal-biopic

It was a good interview with his real fan. So, in video variant now: itPDY-Z24pY

Nice work and facts! :) Will use this data answering "Who is Robbie Williams?" On Twitter :) --- 'Better Man' Review: Robbie Williams Is a CGI Monkey In Wild Take on the Music Biopic Better Man is a strange musical biopic that sticks its wild landing, using unique means to tell another story about the dangers of overnight fame and unlimited access to narcotics. 7/10 https://collider.com/better-man-review-robbie-williams/

If you haven't seen it before - here is 70 minutes Making Of of the movie. fwr7dO75AdM

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And now this interview in a full version: n-Yw0EbgQf8

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The Big Goodbye is a really good and dramatic song... --- Some interesting review of Angels chords and other songs 5pngzGN1zSI

Some pics from our special screening :) In Russian language the construction 'Better man' has no a direct translation because the construction with ER in the end means 'bigger, longer, better', etc. So in our variant the movie called like 'Be Better: History of Robbie Williams' if trying to translate back to English By the way, when Elton John' biopic Rocketman was released it named Рокетмэн what means exactly Rocketman.

34th nomination for animation awards. Annie Awards 2025 https://annieawards.org/winners Outstanding Achievement for Character Animation in a Live Action Production (Luisma Lavin, Seoungseok, Charlie Kim, Shaun Freeman, Carlos Lin, Kaori Miyazawa)

This! @1871209580568400283 https://consequence.net/list/best-movies-of...-annual-report/ In short: Better Man isn't just a great movie. It's a movie that makes you rethink all the possibilities of this genre.

I agree, it was a lovely duet :) Also it was a great last week for our forum! 22nd December 2024 01 145 Lady Gaga 4.56 02 141 Robbie Williams and Take That 4.44 03 79 Spice Girls 2.49

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Film Review: ‘Better Man’ Takes a Very Unusual Approach to Telling the Story of Robbie Williams You really can’t make a traditional biopic anymore. If there’s not something different about your film, audiences just won’t accept it these days. Cradle to the grave just doesn’t work. You either need to zoom in on a specific period in your subject’s life or tackle the genre in a different manner. With Better Man, the story of Robbie Williams has a hell of a hook, one I know most people were not expecting. It sounds bonkers, and it is, but somehow, it works. Better Man is able to distinguish itself by taking the piss out of how traditional this biopic would otherwise be. Williams is a superstar singer, sure, but the rise, fall, and redemption angle has been done so many times before. What makes it so unique here? Well, if you’re somehow not aware, Williams is depicted at all times as a CGI chimpanzee. No one calls attention to it, ever. To everyone else, it’s just Williams. To us, and to the man himself, it’s a chimp telling his tale. Readers, it livens things up in a way that damn near stunned me. We meet Robbie Williams (Jonno Davies for motion capture, Williams himself for the voice) as a boy (or as a young chimp) trying to impress his performer father Peter (Steve Pemberton). That will be a through line for his whole life, especially when Peter leaves to seek his own success. Left with his mother and grandmother, he’s not much of a student, but he is a showman. Eventually, that sheer force of personality makes him a part of a boy band that blows up, managed by the dismissive Nigel Martin Smith (Damon Herriman), beginning his rise to stardom. As he becomes more and more famous, Williams becomes a drunk and drug addict, romances Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno), and gets into all sorts of trouble, all the while having Peter come in and out of his life. It’s all the sort of thing you’d get bored by, if not for the man himself having so much charisma, plus…yeah, he’s a monkey the whole time. In addition, there’s a sneakily emotional ending that works way better than you’re expecting, too. Having Robbie Williams voice his CGI self while Jonno Davies plays him through motion capture works so much better than you’d expect it to. Truly it does. They combine to never call attention to the gimmick or to their work, instead capturing the cinematic portrait of the man. It’s real strong teamwork. That’s important, too, since the other performances more or less fade into the background. Steve Pemberton is solid, but he’s in and out of the narrative. In addition to Raechelle Banno and Damon Herriman, supporting players here include Tom Budge, Frazer Hadfield, Anthony Hayes, Kate Mulvaney, Alison Steadman, and more. Director/co-writer Michael Gracey is emboldened by the ape aspect, which puts the film’s tongue firmly in cheek, even when covering all the expected territory. Along with co-writers Oliver Cole and Simon Gleeson, Gracey does the greatest hits, both in terms of the life story and the music. The script is nothing to get too excited about, but Gracey’s direction, which manages to never call extra attention to the chimp, is a highlight. I was not a fan of The Greatest Showman, but Gracey has won me over here. Plus, Williams himself has such personality, that shines through, helping to keep the flick from ever seeming plodding. Better Man works because it dares to be different in one sense. The biopic aspect is more or less standard issue, but the CGI chimp, alongside Williams’ charisma, is undeniable. Plus, while the original song Forbidden Road is no longer Oscar eligible, it’s a lovely tune at the end. If you’re a Robbie Williams fan, this is a must see. Everyone else? Prepare for something more fun than you might be expecting. SCORE: ★★★ https://awardsradar.com/2024/12/23/film-rev...obbie-williams/

The Simian Better Man Is a Pleasant Evolution of the Musical Biopic In a post-Walk Hard world, it’s good that many biopics of creative individuals are taking chances and messing around with the form. Sure, masterpieces like All That Jazz demonstrated decades ago what wild experimentation and an acute mode of storytelling could accomplish far from the more banal, hagiographic celebrations of a given artist, but in this century there’s still plenty worthy of celebration for their own attempts to mess things about. Rocketman, the sublime version of the Elton John story told from the perspective of a recovering addict and his flawed memories of the past, seems to have opened the doors for others to make similarly bold moves for contemporary audiences. In 2024 we’ve already seen Pharell’s tale told via the mode of an animated Lego movie. This made for a wild, experimental, yet immensely delightful collision of form and content titled Piece by Piece that under the careful direction of Music doc legend Morgan Neville elevates the otherwise linear tale of success to a visual triumph. And then there’s Better Man, the semi-truthful, mostly biographical story of Robbie Williams. Directed by Michael Gracey, whose The Greatest Showman is one of the best contemporary film musicals to truly enter the canon, the film quite literally monkeys around with the truth. For rather than just aping the checkbox events of William’s decades-long career, we see the singer portrayed in simian form, a chimp-like figure with a chip on his shoulder and a dream for grand success. Stripped away from this highly effective and boldly inventive mode of retelling, it’s likely that the story would be just one among many other similar storylines following a boorish, drug addled drunkard discomfited by his success and drowning his sorrows in excess. To its immense credit, Better Man in almost every mode tries to get past these trappings and into deeper, and thus all the more accessible, issues of mental health, self-destruction, and more. Williams’ rise from precocious teen member of a boyband, through to his solo success and tabloid fascination, all whilst battling serious addiction and mental health issues, provides the more linearized elements of the story. Yet it’s the film’s flights of fancy, from grand musical theatre sequence to unapologetic cabaret-style grandiosity that elevates things from mere quotidian concerns about a sad millionaire with daddy issues to something far more delightfully cinematic. What’s somewhat odd for North American audiences, and something that may well be a total shock to many in the U.K., is that at best Williams is considered a one hit wonder, if at all. As the film culminates with a Knebworth concert, wrapping some 125,000 in attendance around his finger, it’s the fellow headliners Oasis and others that on this side of the pond were the dominant exports from that era of so-called Britpop in which neither artist comfortably fits. Where Queen and Elton John, for example, truly were a global superstars that very much are beloved both in the U.K. and over here, Williams burns far less bright in North America than on his native soil. That’s not to say that his story is undeserving, it just makes it a bit strange for those outside his bubble to truly grasp just how bloody huge he was during his peak. Although “Angels” from his 1997 record peaked at number 53 on the U.S. charts some two years after its release in Britain, legendary anthems like “Let Me Entertain You” made barely a mark over here. As for his time in Take That, the boyband craze that took the U.K. by storm barely made a blip, while the likes of The Spice Girls could still fill stadia 30 years on, generated a Hollywood film, and paved the way for the likes of Brittany Spears, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift and others, but equally for the global fascination with the K-Pop and J-Pop bands that fuel millions of fans. So although it takes a bit of a leap even for the musically conscious to simply accept that, yes, Williams was, and still is, a really, really big star in the U.K., it does make some of the braggadocio moments feel oddly provincial when seen outside of the milieu of his success. Of course, much of the point of the film is to point out over and over that such grandiosity and douchebaggery that Robbie exhibited was merely a mask behind which a scared little boy with a penchant for the cabaret stylings of crooners hid, it still feels strangely discombobulating to try and connect from afar to that level of fandom, with the fascination of his travails less earned from the outside than perhaps other legendary artists have accrued. Williams serves as the narrator throughout, and re-recorded many of his songs to fit within the emotional and narrative context of the storyline. As is often the case, many storylines are shifted around for convenience or downright softened, making even his most boorish of behaviors come across as charismatic and deserving of empathy, even if in actually they may have been slightly more destructive and barbaric. Jonno Davies provides the motion capture, and it’s an enormous credit to both his exceptional physicality and the army of boffins at Weta Workshop (the same VFX company that brought the latest Planet of the Apes films to life) that the chimp shtick never gets in the way of expressing the deep emotionality that much of the film expresses. In fact, after a while you almost forget that you’re watching a mo-cap animated figure, another level of suspended disbelief that gives the film much of its power. Even for the uninitiated the tunes prove to be well presented and peppered in ways that drive the narrative forward, and everything from grand dance sequences to moments cuddling on a couch are done in convincing and effective ways. Although Better Man suffers a bit from repetition, the glimpses into the audience of the performer’s own reflected past but one example that’s played out far too many times, there’s still a lot to love about this telling. Much of this has to do with both the committed performances and the rigorous direction by Gracey, assuring that even the most bombastic elements are grounded, and even the most chimpanzee-like antics illustrate a deeper humanity. It’s this deft collision between the fantasy and the reality of this popstar’s life that fuels this telling, and if nothing else there’s never a time where it feels like the kind of gormless celebrity worship that Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping so deliciously parodied. As audience members we are left at the end not really knowing if indeed Robbie Williams is to this day a decent human being, making the film feel at once a confessional and perhaps a convenient excuse for all that transpired. Still, the film makes a pretty good argument that he is indeed a Better Man, at least in contrast to his hellion-like behavior at the height of his success where he almost destroyed his career, was unfaithful to those closest to him, and betrayed both his family and friends. From a man who pleaded to the crowds that we let him entertain us, that is more than enough. 8/10 https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/better...e-effects-music