During the year-long peak of British superstar Robbie Williams’ fame, I often wondered why he found it difficult to achieve real global recognition. For those unfamiliar, Williams got his start in the early 1990s as a member of the hugely popular English boy band Take That. After leaving the group in 1995, just as their success was peaking, Williams transformed from a potential pop culture footnote into an icon. A series of blockbuster albums made him a household name across Britain, Europe and Australia – but not in the United States, where his attempts to gain a foothold in the early 2000s made little headway. Perhaps the country had too many of its own idols – or perhaps as a new musical biopic Better man argues that Williams was too self-deprecating to take the sales pitch seriously.

Director Michael Gracey sticks to the basic contours of the biopic genre. Better man follows Williams’ tough youth, his rise to fame and the ups and downs that came with fame, interspersed with renditions of some of his most famous tracks. This summary suggests that the film is a programmatic, musician-approved project, almost as if it was intended as an entry point for a new generation of fans. Except, get this: Williams is portrayed as a CGI chimpanzee. Like a human-sized, walking, talking chimpanzee, portrayed and voiced by a combination of a motion capture actor (Jonnie Davies), a musician (Adam Tucker) and Williams himself.

Why is he a primate? Better man never explains it – although Williams mentions in the trailer that he feels “less developed” than everyone else – and none of the characters ever comment on it. Instead, the meaning of the imagination remains in the hands of the audience. This decision is a baffling gaffe for a celebrity biopic that will likely prevent it from becoming a bona fide sensation. But Better man deserves to be treated as more than just a strange curiosity: despite the seemingly mundane premise and the invention of the protagonist, it duly addresses the unpredictable personality of its subject and uses the musical sections to advance the story rather than oblige it to take breaks in the event. The result is one of the most thoughtful films about a musician I’ve seen in years.

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A central part of Williams’ appeal has always been his cheekiness, as the British would put it. Yes, he’s a handsome guy who sings catchy hits. But even though his repertoire consists of heartfelt love ballads and stirring anthems about fun, Williams exudes a sense of never taking the glamor around him too seriously. His narrative throughout Better man presents one possible reason for his cavalier attitude: it’s a cover for what he describes as clinical depression that has dogged him throughout his career, particularly at its peak. What better way to emphasize this than to completely remove his image from the film?

Chimpanzee Williams’ engaging presentation is aided by the fact that Gracey began his career as a visual effects artist – he knows his way around computer-generated characters. His previous directorial work was The greatest showmana more conventional film musical that attempts to repackage the complex and troubled life of PT Barnum as a family-friendly, inspirational story. It made little sense, but became something of a box office phenomenon thanks to Hugh Jackman’s bravery and Gracey’s steady hand behind the camera.

Better man Not only does it have similarly catchy melodies, but it also has a far richer theme than Barnum. Williams is also a showman, but he’s a rougher, more personable guy; He has always been open about his personal shortcomings, even on the biggest stage. Particularly striking is Gracey’s careful attention to Williams’ discography. Williams’ career could easily have been filmed as a straightforward jukebox musical, running through the track list of his greatest hits CDs while sprinkling in a bit of mundane backstory material. Instead, Gracey rearranges the chronology and finds numbers that thematically fit the events in his protagonist’s life. Williams performs the power ballad “Feel,” the lead single from his fifth solo album, to illustrate his tough childhood. The director recreates the singer’s famous 2001 live rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” Better manThe grand finale; Instead of just playing another number from the singer, he decides to evoke one of Williams’ biggest inspirations.

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The film’s most jaw-dropping set piece is perhaps also its most timely piece. After recounting his difficult youth in the downtrodden industrial town of Stoke-on-Trent, Better man turns to Williams’ early years in the music industry. Gracey captures the explosion of Take That’s crossover appeal – they climbed the ladder from small gay clubs to national stages – in a scene where the band performs “Rock DJ,” Williams’ solo chart-topper from 2000. It unfolds appears as a non-stop CGI-assisted camera movement, with Williams and his bandmates – who had nothing to do with the song in real life – dancing through the streets of Central London, surrounded by a growing crowd of fans. An artificial long take can sometimes seem like a gimmick, but here it works brilliantly, thanks in part to the creative choreography. Film musical directors have to make certain decisions when bringing their big numbers to the stage: Should they throw everything into a wide shot to capture the scale of the dance numbers but keep the world around them looking static? Or is it better to constantly intervene in the action and highlight the individual players while losing the sense of scale? The one-shot technique helpfully avoids these questions.

Gracey strives to innovate in various other ways, bypassing the visual conventions and limitations of the music genre. A later scene, for example, depicts the anthem “Let Me Entertain You” as a dreamlike battle between Williams and his loudest chimpanzee demons. Highlights like these helped stick Better man in my favor, even if the second half descends into overly maudlin territory as Williams wrestles with the constraints of fame. Still, some viewers might find the audacity of a hero being a CGI chimpanzee insurmountable – especially those who know little about the real person (including their actual appearance). Early box office results seem to indicate the disinterest, if not outright confusion, of U.S. theatergoers. But Williams always thrived on the audience’s sympathy as well as its admiration, and Better man finds a wonderfully silly way to portray this with its charming, if undeveloped, Monkey Star.