Better Man, a new big-budget biopic about Robbie Williams, uses CGI to portray the pop star as a chimp. Directed by Michael Gracey, the film explores the highs and lows of fame and features a performance by actor Jonno Davies as the CGI chimp.
A new film about the tumultuous career of UK boy-band sensation turned solo star Robbie Williams depicts him as an ape. Directed by the maker of The Greatest Showman, it's a revelatory look at the highs and lows of pop star dom. Fame is a relentlessly potent force in pop culture. Its pulse-racing allure – and its bone-crushing pitfalls – have continually inspired songs, from Bowie to Billie Eilish, and fuelled films from technicolour romance to gritty life stories and psych-horror.
Better Man, a new big-budget biopic of British boyband sensation turned solo artist Robbie Williams, offers a first-hand view of the fame circus, with an unusual twist: its leading star is portrayed as a CGI chimp (played by actor Jonno Davies, using motion-capture VFX). Williams is not a household name everywhere – as he is in the UK – but nevertheless the film offers a fascinating insight into stardom either way. For Australian director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman), this deeply surreal scenario remains natural territory: 'Ultimately, the film seeks to tell the story I am always chasing: the pursuit of an impossible dream,' he says in the film's production notes. The CGI is so beguilingly expressive, it also feels entirely plausible that this wide-eyed boy chimp is immersed in a human world For Williams, there is a characteristically snappy logic to his filmic guise. 'There is a surrender to the machinery of the industry that requires you to be a robot or a monkey,' he explains, also in the production notes. 'I chose to be a monkey.'Robbie Williams is one of the UK's biggest pop stars – having started out in boy band Take That (Credit: Paramount Pictures) Better Man introduces us, via Williams's signature tune Let Me Entertain You, to a born performer ('I came out of the womb with jazz hands – which was very painful for my mum,' jokes Williams's narrative voiceover
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