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December 18, 2024 6 mins

Ben O'Shea joined Russell Clarke this morning to review the new Robbie Williams biopic called Better Man where Robbie is portrayed by a CGI chimpanzee. He gave it his score out of five bananas.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I've got the popcorn, a drink, I've snuck in some Maltesers,
and Ben's got the movie.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Yeah I do, indeed, and what a movie it is.
So we're talking about the Robbie Williams biopick Better Man.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Which we're giving tickets away and in season double pass
sometime before nine this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Oh well, listen up every weekday. You want to get
your hands on these tickets. And so I got to
be honest with you. I went into this not being
the biggest fan of Robbie Williams. The only song of
his that I really liked was probably rock DJ because
it's just such a banger. The rest of his stuff
is ballads, okay, and to take that stuff you can
just miss me with the take that stuff. Not interested
at all. And so I went into this movie going, wow,

(00:38):
is it really going to be for me? And especially
because a lot of these musical biopics in recent years,
you know, they're a bit of a dime a dozen.
Bohemian Rhapsody was good, Rocketman was pretty good. Back to
Black About Amy Winehouse not so great. The Bob Marley
one was pretty average, and so you know, I kind
of a bit over the format.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Some of them are glossed all very glossed, very glossed over.
You don't really get the interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Now, you don't expect it. You don't get the gritty
reality of some of these stories, because that's the reality
when you know you're negotiating with an estate or you're
negotiating with a record label and you're trying to get
the right when you're trying to get the rights to
use the music because music licensing costs, you know, can
cost millions of dollars, so you know you're not going

(01:24):
to put in all the warts and all of the
story if you need to license the music, and so
usually the trade off is you get a pretty sanitized biography.
And that was certainly the case with Freddie Mercury and
Elton John, who is still alive obviously in this case
with Robbie Williams, he's very involved in the project and
he's always been sort of bloke who is self deprecating.

(01:47):
He's take the mickey out of himself. He's very open
about that, and so and you see that in the film,
Like there is definitely some aspects of this movie where
you go, geez, you know what, they haven't really pulled it.
He here, they are not trying to make him look
like a hero, but the one thing they do make
him look like is a monkey. And so this is

(02:09):
what separates Better Man from all of the other musical
jukebox films. Robbie Williams is a computed generated chimpanzee. Like
I'm talking Planet of the Apes level.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Just couldn't find the right man for the past.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, well there's a got a different act of voicing
the young Robbie Williams, but then he does his own
voice of this chimp in later life. And you know,
a Robbie Williams biofilm where he is a chimpanzee could
be the worst thing that you've ever seen.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
I think a lot of people would think.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
I think a lot of Yeah, it's the variation of
outcomes here is absolutely huge. It's the biggest risk in
cinema in twenty twenty four, without a doubt in my mind.
But it comes from the greatest Showman director, Michael Gracie,
an Australian director, and it was his idea because he
heard rob Robbi Williams once say you know what, sometimes
I feel like a performing monkey, and he's like, you know,

(03:02):
what let's tap into that, and amazingly it works. It
is so effective. Right from when Robbie Williams is a
little monkey as a kid growing growing up in Stoke
on Trent in England, he's a bit of a he's
a bit of the odd one out with the other kids.
He dreams of being an entertainer like his old man
has the same kind of dreams, a sort of as

(03:22):
an amateur comedian and krooner in the local leagues club.
And so Robbie Williams has those kind of dreams, doesn't
fit in. Eventually gets auditioned for one of the five
positions in Take That, gets the gig and his dad
had abandoned him, comes back into his life. So there's
lots of you know, daddy's son issues there going on

(03:44):
as well. Finds immense fame with Take That at a
very young age in his teens, goes off the rails
with Booze, gets kicked out of Take That, you know,
sort of Gary Barlow's kind of the superstar of Take That,
and Robbie Williams is, you know, the one who's just
kind of the fat monkey as well. Robby Williams is
the only monkey and Weirdly, no human in the film

(04:06):
ever acknowledges that he is a monkey, that he's a talking.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Monkey, so you soon start to forget he's a monkey.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Absolutely, that's the most bizarre thing about it. The CG
effects are so realistic you just go okay, you just
accept it. And there are some wonderful musical numbers in
here as well. Take the take that slash rock DJ
montage is phenomenal, one of the best musical numbers I've
ever seen on screen. They shot it over four days

(04:34):
on Regent Street in London, hundreds of extras like it
is absolutely bonkers. The level of production of this film, and.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Much of it was made in Melbourne.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, yeah, so it's technically class as an Australian film,
Australian directly, and it's an interesting story. Like what I
will say is the pacing of the film probably gets
a bit bogged down in the second half, when you
know he's really kind of in his booze addiction phase.
He does get a bit competitive. You know, he wakes
up every day, he hits the bottle, not much happens,

(05:05):
you know, so that kind of goes on for maybe
a little bit too long.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Monkey Money too too much monkey and.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Around and but you still have, you know, this incredible
story of redemption. A guy who's kind of fallen on
hard times and it's only you know, his kind of ego,
his desire to you know, win the love of his
father and also deal with his own inner demons, his
own insecurities that he's not good enough because of his
dad leaving him. That is driving Robbie Williams to succeed.

(05:33):
And you know, as a solo artist, the level of
success that he had, you know, just absolutely absolutely crazy.
And you see all of that as this chimpanzee is
you know, is in front of a huge crowd at
Leeds of you know, sixty thousand people. There's there's even
an actor in there playing Liam Gallagher and there's a
little interaction between between Robbie Williams at Oasis which is

(05:56):
hilarious and in real life Robbie Williams challenged Liam Gallagher
to a fight at the brit Music I remember that,
which is so there's some fun little history moments there
for people who've not just only followed Robbie Williams but
followed British music over the past twenty years. And the
singing with Robbie on board is just phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
So how many bananas out of five do we give it?

Speaker 2 (06:17):
I'm going to give this three and a half very
enjoyable bananas. This is probably, i reckon, the most enjoyable
movie that's out on Boxing Day this year.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Fantastic So to fully eaten one half eaten banana from
ben o'she On Better Man Robbie Williams. Thanks Ben. We'll
catch you again in twenty twenty five with another year
of movies.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah. Absolutely have a great Christmas in the years
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