It's raw, so simple, but by having that chimpanzee in there it's somehow extremely stark.

| Feb 11, 2025

Regardless of how much Better Man actually works, it’s one of the only recent movies made at its budget level with a genuinely interesting relationship between its form and content.

| Jan 23, 2025

It properly delves into its subject’s erratic persona, using the musical segments to advance the story instead of as mandatory breaks in the action. The result is one of the most thoughtfully constructed movies about a musician I’ve seen in years.

| Jan 15, 2025

While the movie is drawn from Robbie Williams’ life, it’s better to think of it as a fantasy feature. Michael Gracey plays with image and emotion over facts, telling a story through bold, expressive, visually startling sequences.

| Original Score: 89/100 | Jan 15, 2025

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.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 15, 2025

In the end, it is overlong, it is indulgent, and it is essentially foolish, but for all that, it is much more rewarding and entertaining than I expected, and damn it if that central idea actually doesn't work.

| Jan 14, 2025

Doesn’t try to narrate the arc of Robbie Williams' story so much as ride the emotional waves of it.

| Jan 13, 2025

If any miracles are performed here, they belong to Gracey, who in one swoop has managed to reinvent the biopic, up the ante on the ongoing revival of movie musicals and raise the legacy of Robbie Williams to a level that feels fully earned.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 13, 2025

Interestingly, the best part of “Better Man” is Williams.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 13, 2025

There are moments in "Better Man," the often thrilling biopic of unabashedly cheeky U.K. pop star Robbie Williams, where you forget you're watching a CGI monkey in the lead role.

| Original Score: B | Jan 13, 2025

Despite some dazzling dance sequences and a final upbeat swing of reconciliation and forgiveness, it’s a threadbare narrative arc.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 10, 2025

The film, however, would surely be better as a conversation with a therapist, rather than an estimated $110 million-budget movie.

| Jan 10, 2025

In a world of humans, bad boy British pop rocker Robbie Williams casts himself as a computer=generated monkey. Too much? Maybe. But damn, this banger-infused biopic works like gangbusters under the visual magic of monkeyshines director Michael Gracey

| Jan 10, 2025

Better Man stocks itself fully with priceless, surprisingly tender moments along with numerous telling concert scenes.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 10, 2025

The key is that Williams’ need to entertain was primal -- so primal that it triumphed over self-doubt, depression and addiction. It should surprise nobody, then, that this film, produced and narrated by Williams, is above all entertaining.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 8, 2025

An out-of-nowhere biopic that monkeys around with formula and comes up with something truly original.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 8, 2025

Can't fault Williams for becoming the beloved entertainer that was always his aspiration, though. "The Greatest Showman" director Gracey plays into that, especially in the spectacle-packed music sequences that overdo the maudlin and martyr imagery.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 8, 2025

The script also fails to make sense of why Williams was such a significant cultural figure... I’m not sure Williams knows either. Never mind: as its subject must have often felt himself, it’s just a pleasure to be along for the ride.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 8, 2025

A blazing, restless inventiveness that goes beyond mere sensationalism into something downright pathological.

| Jan 7, 2025

“Who is Robbie Williams?” he asks at the start. He answers his own question: he is “narcissistic, punchable and just a f..king twat”, but ­despite that, or because of that, he is here to entertain you, and this movie does the same.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 3, 2025