A new film about the turbulent career of British boy band sensation and solo star Robbie Williams shows him as a monkey. Directed by the creator of The Greatest Showman, it’s a revealing look at the highs and lows of pop stardom.

Fame is an unrelentingly powerful force in pop culture. Its breathtaking appeal – and bone-crushing pitfalls – have inspired songs from Bowie to Billie Eilish and inspired films from Technicolor romances to gritty memoirs and psychological horror. “Better Man,” a new big-budget biopic about British boy band sensation and solo artist Robbie Williams, offers a firsthand look at the famous circus, with an unusual twist: Its protagonist is portrayed as a CGI chimpanzee (played by actor Jonno Davies). , with motion capture VFX). Williams isn’t a household name everywhere – like he is in Britain – but the film still offers a fascinating insight into celebrity. For Australian director Michael Gracey (“The Greatest Showman”), this deeply surreal scenario remains self-evident: “Ultimately, the film tries to tell the story that I always pursue: the search for an impossible dream,” he says in the production notes of the Films.

For Williams, his filmmaking is characterized by a characteristically biting logic. “There is a capitulation to the machinery of industry that requires you to be a robot or a monkey,” he also explains in the production notes. “I chose to be a monkey.”

Better Man introduces us to a born performer with Williams’ signature song “Let Me Entertain You” (“I came out of the womb with jazz hands – which was very painful for my mother,” jokes Williams’ narrative voiceover). There’s obviously something different about young Robert, but the CGI is so beguilingly expressive that it also seems completely plausible that this wide-eyed chimpanzee boy is immersing himself in a human world: he sings to Sinatra with his father (Steve Pemberton) and listens to himself Stories from his grandma (a wonderfully cuddly Alison Steadman). Williams’ desire for fame is obvious, but his deep-rooted self-doubt and fear of being a “nobody” are also evident.

The turn of the 1990s brought about a decisive change; At 16, Williams was the youngest member of Take That: a pop quintet from Manchester formed by manager Nigel Martin-Smith after the huge success of American heartthrob New Kids On The Block. Take That weren’t an overnight hit; The film chronicles their chaotic beginnings (Williams’ voice-over mentions that each member earned £180 each in the first 18 months) – but with Williams’ endearingly cheeky personality, the band became a real phenomenon, dominating the charts and galore Teenage dreams with their groundbreaking hits.

Better Man serves up choreographed sets that combine British pop culture details and Busby Berkeley-style flamboyance; A euphoric group performance of Williams’ track “Rock DJ” captures how pop stars can feel superhuman. However, through Williams’ dizzying descent into self-destruction and depression and his departure from Take That, we are quickly reminded of his precarity. Every time he performs on stage, he sees demonic doppelgangers glowering at him in the crowd – a terror that only intensifies even as he launches a record-breaking solo career.

Williams has always been open about his flaws and his struggles with addiction and excess – it’s like he can’t stop picking at his scars, be it in song lyrics, soundbites or documentaries, including the 2002 tour film Nobody Someday and one Netflix series (2023) as well as several books by his official biographer Chris Heath. Still, there’s something particularly poignant about Better Man’s dramatization; Williams’ ape persona heightens the flowery weirdness of his experiences in the music industry – and also softens some of the darkest points of his story. The film never takes the superficial “jukebox musical” approach of incorporating hits into the narrative; Instead, Better Man’s soundtrack recontextualizes several of Robbie’s greatest songs (Feel, sung by his childhood self; Come Undone; She’s The One, reimagined as a duet as he falls in love with fellow pop star Nicole Appleton). feels insightful. Robbie has always been a flamboyant showman, but his sense of intimacy – be it his longing for affection and acceptance or his astute self-criticism – seems surprisingly amplified here.

Williams is undeniably a magnetic presence, whether on screen or in the flesh. I met him in person twice; I first interned at British pop magazine Smash Hits in the early ’90s, when Williams jumped into the office with his Take That bandmate Jason Orange. They looked at me questioningly; I was a young girl, their target audience. Blinded by her sexy aura of fame, I was too shy to do anything but stare back.

A few decades later there was a more conversational encounter; I interviewed Williams for Metro newspaper, where I was music editor. He had just released his ninth album, Take The Crown, and was still restlessly ambitious. “I’m obsessed… with pop music, with being a pop star, with being successful and not being a has-been,” he told me. He spoke about the search for the perfect pop song and described fixating on negative YouTube comments even though these were far outweighed by positive posts.

“Better Man” isn’t just a Robbie Williams biopic. It’s a snapshot of the 1990s: a time when the music business was booming and the fame phenomenon was reaching fever pitch. Pop culture was probably never the same again. Band managers may have been visionary, but they also often ruthlessly controlled and directed every aspect of young artists’ lives, from their demanding work schedules to their diets and personal relationships.

Music consultant, manager and writer Alex Kadis was a former editor at Smash Hits and worked closely with members of Take That for years. “The managers were very competitive with each other – which made the bands and fan bases competitive,” she tells the BBC. “I think that’s part of the intensity of the ’90s. And I think it was the first time I really became aware of emotional marketing; Suddenly I felt like artists could have a deep connection with their audience – it wasn’t just plugging in a product, but themselves as people.

This could prove to be a crude exchange. As a young journalist, I interviewed the infamous pop Svengali Tom Watkins (who had managed the boy bands Bros and East 17 as well as the Pet Shop Boys); He was both fascinating and absolutely impressive. “We sell sex,” Watkins barked.

Given the sacrifices that come with fame – the loss of privacy and autonomy; the culture shock of artists suddenly finding themselves outside a band’s bubble – the chaotic breakdowns depicted in Better Man seem pretty inevitable. Kadis remembers when Williams left Take That in 1995. “At that point he was like a man suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder,” she says. “He wasn’t sleeping, he started taking a lot of drugs, he didn’t know who he was anymore. I think the ’90s bled these pop stars dry. They had to continue to feed their audience and play a character.”

Kadis compares the trajectory of pop fame to a runaway train (“It really depends on which train car you were able to jump on for a while”). For all its exhilarating highlights, the route is also clearly traumatic; The tragic death of Liam Payne Earlier this year is further evidence of the pressures young artists must face. Williams recently appeared on the BBC series Boybands Forever, where he expressed some truths: “Nobody gets to that level of fame and comes out completely healthy.” Significantly, the end credits of Better Man include a reference to the support service 988 Lifeline Suicide and Crisis.

Better Man’s narrative is steeped in many classic elements: an ambitious adventure in the vein of A Star Is Born; a nightmarish descent; a father-son bonding story. Ultimately, it’s also a story of redemption that ends in the early 21st century, although anyone who has followed Williams’ career – or the music industry in general – knows that the show is far from over. When I interviewed Williams, I asked him what superpowers his pop fame has given him: “To get on stage, face your fear and the responsibility that everyone depends on you for their livelihood. I take my hat off to myself,” he replied: Laughter. “Because it’s terrifying and exhilarating.”

Better Man is released on December 26th in the UK and Australia and is available in limited release in the US on December 25th.