Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.A little over a year ago, Netflix released Robbie Williams, a four-part documentary in which the British pop star discussed addiction and his career. The mood was pointedly frank. (Reviews noted that Williams spent the whole thing in his underwear.) And the reception was positive, without in any way suggesting a musical biopic tracing the same events would soon also become a film of hats-off audacity and unlikely excellence.And yet here is Better Man, in which the subject is clothed but with a caveat. He is also rendered as a chimpanzee among the human cast: computer generated; cheekily articulate; and riddled with self-loathing.Pre-publicity explains the logic as reflecting Williams’ self-image as “unevolved”. Credit should go to BoJack Horseman, the Netflix animation in which a faded LA sitcom star happened to be a horse. Here as there, the animal magic is a masterstroke, giving a surreal twist to what would otherwise simply be grim, and capturing a certain sad, strange truth about the subject.Non-UK readers might be trying to remind themselves who Williams actually is. But if the project is deeply British, international appeal is implied and supplied by director Michael Gracey. The filmmaker is known for The Greatest Showman (2017), the all-conquering big-top musical extravaganza. Here his gift for gusto is smartly used.While the early days of Williams’ boy band Take That, for instance, are low-rent, the first rush of success is delirious. Tweaking the timeline, the band and many extras do a mass song-and-dance to Williams’ later hit “Rock DJ” on a light-show Regent Street brash enough it all but reaches out of the screen to steal your drink.But if the set pieces go full-tilt, the mood is more cautionary than celebratory. Sly humour fills the movie, even or especially when the teenage pin-up is already piling through Prozac and vodka. (When he passes out at a Take That arena show, a fellow band member complains of being made to look an idiot, then prances off shirtless and in devil horns.)But a triumphant solo career is also the cliff edge. Drugs harden, moods darken. The rise and fall are one and the same, each driven by a pathological need for attention and the poisoned well of the Nineties and Noughties music business. If our ape hero is painted as a victim, the portrait of the artist can still be memorably ugly.Of course, the story arc eventually curves up, but the movie is quite the one-off: a crowd-pleaser that feels like singing along to a psychiatric report.★★★★☆In UK cinemas from Boxing Day
