Who is Robbie Williams? Sure, that’s the question most Americans would ask when given the elevator pitch for “Better Man,” the latest film from “The Greatest Showman” director Michael Gracey. (His meteoric success in Britain, both as a member of British boy band Take That and in his own chart-topping solo career, never quite translated across the pond.) But in classic music biopic fashion, ” Better Man is also about the kinds of insights into the man behind the music that these kinds of pictures require: the rough working-class childhood, the disapproving father figure, the roller coaster ride of sex, drugs and Market forces that create and destroy our most iconic pop culture characters. But Gracey, Williams and the crew shed their greatest misfortune from these tropes in the film’s opening seconds, when Williams purrs off-camera, “I want to show you how I really see myself” — an anthropomorphic ape rendered in pitch-perfect CGI . “Planet of the Apes” meets “Top of the Pops” and it’s just the first magic trick that Gracey’s stirring, effective chronicle wants to show you.

After all, Williams has described in interviews that he feels like a performing monkey and is “a little less developed” than his fellow human beings; This is borne out in his real life as the youngest and brash member of Take That, known for his public antics and well-documented history of drug use and partying. But the secret to the sauce is that Gracey and “Better Man” take this gimmick completely seriously: there’s very little lampshading, nor is there a transformative moment where it becomes the real Robbie Williams. This is the furry skin that Williams feels trapped in, and every gesture illustrates this dissonance. Supported by a smart, supple mo-cap performance from Jonno Davies (with Williams providing his own soulful voice-over), the Williams we see on screen is as much a simulacrum as the real man, somewhere between human , animal and computer creation exists. Except for a few moments, he behaves and dresses like a human: only a few times does the film show a distraught Williams wailing or puffing out his chest. “Better Man” is all about the gap between the way people see him and the way he sees himself, and how his personal demons prevent him from enjoying the success that is his own brought wildness.

Gracey, whose flourishes made “The Greatest Showman” one of the biggest musical hits of the century, finds the right balance here between naturalism and sensationalism. Some scenes play out like they’re in a Mike Leigh movie; But then it moves on to another hyperactive, exuberant musical sequence that recontextualizes Williams’ deeply personal lyrics to mark specific high and low points in his life. Gracey’s production is remarkable in its fluidity: some are reminiscent of the raw intimacy of “Sing Street”, others seem like action sequences. (“Come Undone” shows him speeding away from Take That after his antics got him kicked out of the band; it goes from a “Fast and Furious”-level chase to the striking image of Williams lying in a lake drowning, surrounded by hordes of paparazzi circling and scurrying around him like electric eels. His appearance in Knebworth turns into a pure monkey battle royale straight out of Love Death & Robots,” as Williams literally battles his demons.

But the real showstopper is “Rock DJ,” a stirring one-shot sequence that takes us through multiple eras of Take That’s meteoric rise, showing hundreds of dancers filling Regent Street as the band rotates and from one iconic costume change moves on to the next. If you don’t see any other scene from this movie, watch this one. It’s remarkable. It’s reminiscent of Dexter Fletcher’s admirable work on “Rocketman,” another dazzling account of a famous British pop star who took bold turns to escape the quicksand of the biopic’s signature rhythms.

“Better Man” risks losing momentum if it imitates the structural patterns of other musical biographies: the rise and fall of his success may, in theory, become somewhat repetitive as he forges his musical identity and embraces his own Lennon-McCartney quarrels with Take That Fremesis Gary Barlow (Jake Simmance), finds and loses love and returns to the spotlight. But Gracey puts a lot of effort into the production to keep us interested. Williams’ demons emerge in the form of intrusive mind copies of himself staring back at him from the crowd; They haunt him and fill him with self-doubt, which sends him running to alcohol, coke and groupies, to the chagrin of his girlfriend Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno, who does a lot with a little here). That this, as Dewey Cox would say, dark time takes place with a computer monkey rather than the real McCoy feels oddly fitting; Williams can play the pathos while at the same time leaving a conscious distance from his true image and the audience itself. It’s a smart move that allows him to vulnerably share his lows while downplaying the pomp and circumstance of his highs.

It helps, of course, that Williams takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to his own legend, always half-struggling with the feeling that he was never meant to be this famous. The satirical touch here is just enough to free itself from the peculiarities of the genre without completely turning it into “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”. It’s ridiculous because Robbie is ridiculous and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Even at his lowest moments, Williams is willing to recognize the innate absurdity of his suffering: his nadir takes the form of a monkey crying over cocaine residue while clad in a lip-sucking, space-age vacuum suit.

You won’t see another music biopic like “Better Man,” regardless of how familiar you are with the subject matter. There’s a lot of charm here that helps sell the nonsensical gimmick; “Gracey” takes us through Cliff’s Notes about Williams’ life so quickly that it’s hard to stop to imagine the image of a fully clothed chimpanzee getting a handjob from a groupie in a nightclub. Not to mention the strange feeling of watching a monkey in a tuxedo belting out “My Way” as a spiritual reclamation of his own celebrity. It’s cheeky, on the face and on the nose. But that’s Robbie Williams. Could a biopic about him be different? Come on. Let him entertain you.