Review of the film “Best Man”: a very creative biography of Robbie Williams

By deciding to replace Robbie Williams with a CGI monkey, director and co-writer Michael Gracey gives this biographical film an unexpected appeal.

One might think that this is just an easy gimmick, an artifice intended to create buzz and get people talking about an otherwise ordinary film. No way! Because Robbie Williams, a huge British star who began his career as a singer in the boy band Take That, speaks with great sincerity, hiding nothing about his problems with drug and alcohol consumption and his lack of self-confidence. him.

And the monkey serves this purpose admirably. Used as a secondary message (not so secondary, the implication is obvious from the first minutes of Best man), the chimpanzee created by performance capture (actor Jonno Davies also does the voice, as does Robbie Williams who is narrating) allows us to take stock of both the character that the singer plays in life and his weakness esteem of him.

We meet him as a child, the victim of bullying during a soccer game with his classmates. We then see him abandoned by Peter (Steve Pemberton), his father, who will eventually leave the family home to pursue his dream of becoming a singer. Little Robert, who grows up in a working class environment, is nevertheless loved and cuddled by his mother, Janet (Kate Mulvany), and his grandmother, Betty (Alison Steadman).

When manager Nigel Martin-Smith (Damon Herriman) decides to start a boy band, Robert comes forward and lands a place in the Take That quintet. The rest is known: the group achieves success, young Robert – renamed “Robbie” by Nigel – falls into drugs and ends up leaving the group to pursue a solo career, the details of which we learn.

Best man is also an opportunity for Robbie Williams to contextualize his songs – both solo and within Take That – the choreography around She’s The Onecomposed for Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno), a member of the All Saints group to whom he becomes engaged, constituting one of the particularly poignant highlights of the feature film.

Other moments remain in people’s minds, such as the image ofAngelswritten in memory of his grandmother, or Forbidden Roadrecorded especially for the film. And it is obviously My Waysung at the beginning and end of Best manwhich gives you chills and which allows you to fully appreciate this artist, who is better than we thought.

Rating: 4 out of 5