Movie · 2024 · Music, Drama · 2h 15m · R · English
Curator score: 7.3/10 (340.3K ratings)
Fame makes monkeys of us all.
Overview
Follow Robbie Williams' journey from childhood, to being the youngest member of chart-topping boyband Take That, through to his unparalleled achievements as a record-breaking solo artist – all the while confronting the challenges that stratospheric fame and success can bring.
Ratings
Curator score: 7.3/10
IMDb: 7.5/10
Letterboxd: 3.77/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 89%
Metacritic: 77
TMDB: 7.6/10
Director
Michael Gracey
Production
RocketScience, Facing East Entertainment, Sina Studios, Lost Bandits, Footloose Productions, VicScreen
Cast
Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton, Alison Steadman, Kate Mulvany, Frazer Hadfield, Damon Herriman, Raechelle Banno, Tom Budge, Jake Simmance, Liam Head, Chase Vollenweider, Jesse Hyde, Anthony Hayes, John Waters, Leo Harvey-Elledge, Chris Gun, Carter J. Murphy, Asmara Feik, Rafferty Gleeson
Where to watch
Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, MGM Plus, Philo, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A wildly inventive, emotionally direct jukebox biopic that turns a familiar rise-fall-redemption story into something kinetic and genuinely surprising. The high-concept monkey conceit sounds like a joke, but the film uses it to sharpen the loneliness, self-mythology, and self-destruction at the center of celebrity.
Best for
Viewers who want a music biopic with real formal ambition
Fans of big, emotional, crowd-pleasing spectacle
People open to absurdist concepts that still play sincere
Audiences who like performance-heavy, visually maximal filmmaking
Skip if
You want a straightforward, realistic biography
You dislike stylized musical numbers or constant sensory overload
The idea of a knowingly weird high-concept premise puts you off
You prefer subtle, low-key character studies
Overview
Better Man takes the most overfamiliar parts of the music-biopic playbook and attacks them with enough visual invention to make them feel fresh again. Michael Gracey stages the rise, collapse, and self-reckoning of Robbie Williams with a pop-musical confidence that keeps the film moving even when the story hits familiar beats. The result is messy in places, but rarely dull, and often exhilarating.
Worth noting
The monkey conceit is not just a gimmick; it becomes the movie’s way of externalizing shame, ego, and the distance between public image and private pain. That choice gives the film a strange emotional honesty, especially in the bigger performance sequences, which are the moments when it truly locks in. Even skeptics of music biopics may find themselves won over by how hard this thing commits.
Bottom line
It is overstuffed, occasionally obvious, and very much built to be felt rather than analyzed. But as a piece of pop spectacle with a bruised heart underneath, it lands far better than it has any right to. For viewers willing to go with the premise, it’s one of the more memorable studio-scale musical biopics in years.
Top Letterboxd reviews
demi adejuyigbe · 7061 likes
The Rock DJ sequence alone is an easy five stars and the action sequence near the end where he performs at a festival I refuse to Google but have decided through their accents is called Net Worth, bumps it up to a 7 out of 5. Watched this completely alone in an AMC in Pittsburgh and it upsets me that Americans won’t get to see it in a packed theater simply because no one “knows who Robbie Williams is.” Okay?… more The Rock DJ sequence alone is an easy five stars and the action sequence near the end where he performs at a festival I refuse to Google but have decided through their accents is called Net Worth, bumps it up to a 7 out of 5. Watched this completely alone in an AMC in Pittsburgh and it upsets me that Americans won’t get to see it in a packed theater simply because no one “knows who Robbie Williams is.” Okay?… more
Karsten (4★) · 5483 likes
goes unnecessarily hard. looks AMAZING, songs slap. whole thing is buzzing with energy. the monkey stuff, i could go an hour on that. please don’t make me watch the greatest showman (i will)
Chris Feil (2★) · 5128 likes
At long last, a movie where a cgi monkey pounds cocaine, gets jerked off, and hangs with Oasis
Patrick Willems · 4227 likes
It's me, The Guy Who Does Not Like Music Biopics here to report that this contains every music biopic cliche I hate and yet somehow it works. I will be yelling about this movie to anyone within earshot for the next year but the most important things about it to me personally
1. Liam and Noel Gallagher are characters in the movie2. Robbie Williams with his skin ripped off from the Rock DJ video appears but in monkey form… more