Better Man (15, 134 mins)
Verdict: Who’s a cheeky monkey?
Like most guests at the London premiere, I awaited Better Man with bemusement, which did not exactly recede when Williams himself swaggered onto the stage to declare that this was unequivocally the proudest day of his life, trumping even fatherhood
Yet more than two hours later, as the former Take That star made his way out through the audience, arms raised triumphantly like a boxer (or a chimp), it was hard not to get caught up in the congratulatory hoopla
The last week of the year brings us perhaps the year’s oddest movie: a Robbie Williams biopic in which Stoke-on-Trent’s most famous pop star is played by a chimpanzee, or at any rate by an actor, Jonno Davies, rendered as a chimp by the same special effects company that worked on the Planet Of The Apes films.
Like most guests at the London premiere, I awaited Better Man with bemusement, which did not exactly recede when Williams himself swaggered onto the stage to declare that this was unequivocally the proudest day of his life, trumping even fatherhood.
Yet more than two hours later, as the former Take That star made his way out through the audience, arms raised triumphantly like a boxer (or a chimp), it was hard not to get caught up in the congratulatory hoopla.
And by the cold light of the next morning, the verdict hadn’t changed: you needn’t be a diehard fan for the sheer brio and quirkiness of this movie to make it tremendously, albeit surprisingly, enjoyable.
With Carter-J Murphy as the child-chimp version of Williams (who narrates throughout), the film chronicles his pre-fame life in working-class Stoke, being bullied at school, while at home he is abandoned by his feckless father (Steve Pemberton), who if nothing else has passed on his show-off tendencies and a love of Frank Sinatra.
Raised by his mother (Kate Mulvany) and grandmother (Alison Steadman), young Robert seems destined for not very much until, on the radio, he hears about auditions for a boy band.
He is only 15 but wins over manager Nigel Martin-Smith (Damon Herriman) with his cockiness.
Take That are formed. ‘In five years we’re all going to hate each other but we’ll be ****ing rich,’ says Martin-Smith, and he’s not wrong.
Nobody is hated more than Williams.
Overwhelmed by fame and its pressures, he’s a raging cocaine addict and alcoholic by the age of 21, and falls out with his bandmates, especially Gary Barlow (Jake Simmance).
His many inner demons, his gnawing sense of impostor syndrome, are represented by other chimps, snarling at him from the crowd, until he banishes them with his success as a solo artist.
It’s all precisely as weird as it sounds, but instead of the CGI and motion-capture chimp seeming like a misplaced conceit, it somehow works.
The idea reportedly came from Williams telling Australian director Michael Gracey that all his life he has felt like a performing monkey, less evolved than others.
Nicholas Hoult plays Bob Mathews, the warped, poisonous but charismatic leader of a murderous band of white supremacists, trying to unleash a race war. Jude Law is the troubled, loose-cannon FBI agent trying to nail him.
It was Gracey’s idea to represent him like that, lifting what might have been a standard rags-to-riches pop biopic into something audaciously original.
Gracey also made The Greatest Showman (2017). What a shame for the irrepressible Williams that the title’s been used before.
The Order (15, 116 mins)
Verdict: Decent if formulaic
ANOTHER Aussie director, Justin Kurzel, is responsible for The Order, a decent thriller based on true events in America’s Pacific Northwest in the 1980s, yet starring a pair of Brits. Nicholas Hoult plays Bob Mathews, the warped, poisonous but charismatic leader of a murderous band of white supremacists, trying to unleash a race war. Jude Law is the troubled, loose-cannon FBI agent trying to nail him.
ANOTHER Aussie director, Justin Kurzel, is responsible for The Order, a decent thriller based on true events in America’s Pacific Northwest in the 1980s, yet starring a pair of Brits
Neither is an entirely obvious casting choice — indeed you could be forgiven for not recognising Law, wearing a bristly moustache and a paunch. At the post-screening press conference at this year’s Venice Film Festival, one irreverent journalist actually asked him what it was like now being the ‘old bloke’ in a movie, seeing the dishy guy played by someone else.
Well, it could be that his best ‘old bloke’ role is yet to come, but he was also very good as a gout-ridden Henry VIII in last year’s Firebrand, and is similarly fine in The Order.
As for the director, Kurzel, he has impressive form in dramatising real-life horror; he directed 2021’s excellent Nitram, about the Australian mass murderer Martin Bryant. This isn’t quite as compelling.
As so often in films featuring a maverick law man, there’s a decidedly formulaic feel to it. Nevertheless, it’s a story worth telling, satisfyingly well told.
All films reviewed are in cinemas now.
