• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Catholic Review

Catholic Review

Inspiring the Archdiocese of Baltimore

Menu
  • Home
  • News
        • Local News
        • World News
        • Vatican News
        • Obituaries
        • Featured Video
        • En Español
        • Sports News
        • Official Clergy Assignments
        • Schools News
  • Commentary
        • Contributors
          • Question Corner
          • George Weigel
          • Elizabeth Scalia
          • Michael R. Heinlein
          • Effie Caldarola
          • Guest Commentary
        • CR Columnists
          • Archbishop William E. Lori
          • Rita Buettner
          • Christopher Gunty
          • George Matysek Jr.
          • Mark Viviano
          • Father Joseph Breighner
          • Father Collin Poston
          • Robyn Barberry
          • Hanael Bianchi
          • Amen Columns
  • Entertainment
        • Events
        • Movie & Television Reviews
        • Arts & Culture
        • Books
        • Recipes
  • About Us
        • Contact Us
        • Our History
        • Meet Our Staff
        • Photos to own
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • CR Media platforms
        • Electronic Edition
  • Advertising
  • Shop
        • Purchase Photos
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • Magazine Subscriptions
        • Archdiocesan Directory
  • CR Radio
        • CR Radio
        • Protagonistas de Fe
  • News Tips
  • Subscribe
This is the official poster for the movie "Better Man." The OSV News classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. (OSV News photo/Paramount)

Movie Review: ‘Better Man’

January 13, 2025
By Kurt Jensen
OSV News
Filed Under: Movie & Television Reviews

Share
Share on Facebook
Share
Share this
Pin
Pin this
Share
Share on LinkedIn

NEW YORK (OSV News) – If nothing else, “Better Man” (Paramount), the biopic of British pop star Robbie Williams, avoids the familiar formula of show business sagas. Most fundamentally, that’s because Williams voices himself as a CGI chimpanzee.

This initially startling conceit — a stylized allegory — is presumably meant to suggest that audiences think of celebrities as little more than performing monkeys. It also implies that fans might regard Williams — who rose from a working-class background to become the best-selling British solo artist of all time — as less evolved than others.

Once the story settles into its groove, however, director and co-writer Michael Gracey, who penned the script with Simon Gleeson and Oliver Cole, serves up a mostly pleasant tale. Thus Williams’ songs are enhanced with elaborate choreography — though the pain behind some of the lyrics is touched on as well.

The plot traces Williams’ experiences from 1982 to 2003. As an awkward youth in Stoke-on-Trent, the future headliner wants nothing more than to be a professional entertainer. He succinctly summarizes his own ambitions with the simple phrase, “I don’t want to be a nobody.”

Williams’ father, Peter (Steve Pemberton), is a small-time comic who performs in pubs and nurtures big dreams. But his presence in his son’s life is a limited one.

Peter teaches Robbie how to sing in the big-band style of Frank Sinatra. Yet he abandons the family at the first glimmer of possible success and only reappears occasionally thereafter. Grandmother Betty (Alison Steadman), by contrast, is Robbie’s rock — even when his mother Janet (Kate Mulvany), who struggles after Peter’s departure, has her doubts about him.

Williams gets his first break when he passes an audition to join a newly formed boy band, Take That, managed by Nigel Martin-Smith (Damon Herriman). Martin-Smith, who Williams compares to Willy Wonka, demands that young Robert become Robbie. Though Williams doesn’t like the change at first, he eventually sees it as “something I could hide behind.”

Martin-Smith is controlling but adept. After a series of appearances in gay clubs, presumably intended to perfect the group’s sexy stage moves, he unleashes Take That on hordes of screaming girls. Recordings and TV exposure follow.

In spite of his popularity with live audiences, Robbie is eventually kicked out of the ensemble, due in large part to the machinations of bandmate Gary Barlow (Jake Simmance), who sees him as a threat. The prevailing wisdom at the time, moreover, is that boy bands are passe — grunge is the latest fashion.

Proving adaptable, Williams sets out on his own. His continued professional success is not matched by his personal life, though, which is dominated for a time by his tortured romance with Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno) of the girl group All Saints.

Robbie gains a songwriting partner in Guy Chambers (Tom Budge). Guy teaches him how to distill his troubles into ballads that are more soulful than his previous repertoire. That’s just as well since his travails ultimately include a completely out-of-control cocaine addiction. Viewers may be left wondering how this crippling problem was allowed to go unaddressed for so long.

“Better Man” seeks neither to shock nor offend. Yet the generally frank tone it adopts overall, together with a momentary plot point involving a compelled abortion, indicates that even grown-ups should approach this retrospective with caution.

The film contains scenes of drug and alcohol abuse, a fleeting aberrant sexual encounter, a glimpse of upper female nudity, an implied abortion, numerous profanities and pervasive rough and crude language. The OSV News classification is L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Read More Movie & TV Reviews

superman

Movie Review: Superman

sorry baby

Movie Review: Sorry, Baby

Jurassic World Rebirth

Movie Review: Jurassic World Rebirth

Movie Review: M3GAN 2.0

Home viewing roundup: What’s available to stream and what’s on horizon

Fox Nation announces second season for ‘Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints’

Copyright © 2025 OSV News

Print Print

Share
Share on Facebook
Share
Share this
Pin
Pin this
Share
Share on LinkedIn

Primary Sidebar

Kurt Jensen

View all posts from this author

For the latest news delivered twice a week via email or text message, sign up to receive our free enewsletter.

| MOST POPULAR |

  • Hunt Valley parishioner recalls her former student – a future pope

  • superman Movie Review: Superman

  • Deacon Gary Elliott Dumer Jr., active in men’s ministry, dies

  • Loyola University Maryland graduate ordained Jesuit priest

  • Pope Leo visits Italian Carabinieri station, Poor Clares during summer break

| CURRENT EDITION |

CR digital edition

| Vatican News |

Pope Leo visits Italian Carabinieri station, Poor Clares during summer break

Caring for others, serving life is the ‘supreme law,’ pope says

Jesus did not ignore those in need, and neither should Christians, pope says

Cardinal Czerny asks church to remember seafarers on Sea Sunday

Hunt Valley parishioner recalls her former student – a future pope

| Catholic Review Radio |

CatholicReview · Catholic Review Radio

| Movie & Television Reviews |

superman

Movie Review: Superman

sorry baby

Movie Review: Sorry, Baby

Jurassic World Rebirth

Movie Review: Jurassic World Rebirth

Movie Review: M3GAN 2.0

Home viewing roundup: What’s available to stream and what’s on horizon

| En español |

‘No tengan miedo de hacer lo que El Señor quiere para nosotros’

Dios quiere ayudar a las personas a descubrir su valor y dignidad, dice el Papa

El ‘Padre Migrante’ nos relata su vida sirviendo a comunidades inmigrantes

El ‘Obispo Bruce’ forjó fuertes lazos con Baltimore en tiempos difíciles y tenía corazón de pastor

El Papa León comienza su pontificado pidiendo una ‘Iglesia unida’ en un mundo herido

Footer

Our Vision

Real Life. Real Faith. 

Catholic Review Media communicates the Gospel and its impact on people’s lives in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and beyond.

Our Mission

Catholic Review Media provides intergenerational communications that inform, teach, inspire and engage Catholics and all of good will in the mission of Christ through diverse forms of media.

Contact

Catholic Review
320 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
443-524-3150
mail@CatholicReview.org

 

Social Media

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Recent

  • Poll: Record-high percentage of U.S. adults say immigration good for country
  • Scopes Monkey Trial ignited century-long debate on evolution and belief 
  • Patriarchs support Christian communities attacked by Israeli settlers in solidarity visit
  • Pope Leo visits Italian Carabinieri station, Poor Clares during summer break
  • 1 officer dead, 3 seminarians kidnapped after attack on Nigerian seminary
  • Trump administration to appeal after judge blocks ICE detentions based on race
  • Remember common decency in immigration enforcement
  • Sponsors – for life
  • Listen for God this summer

Search

Membership

Catholic Media Assocation

Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association

The Associated Church Press

© 2025 CATHOLIC REVIEW MEDIA, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

en Englishes Spanish
en en