Better Man: musical biopic of Robbie Williams as performing monkey will entertain you

I can remember the mixed feelings I experienced as a teenager in 1997, buying Life Thru A Lens – my first Robbie Williams album – cautious it was too poppy to sit with my humble-but-growing CD collection of artists that would later be known as Britpop.

Yet, the album’s inherent cheekiness combined with moments of vulnerability made it something I was comfortable to include as part of the soundtrack to my adolescent life. I was reminded of these feelings watching Better Man (2024), director Michael Gracey’s new biopic musical that charts the story of the Williams’ journey to superstardom, along with his self-consciousness regarding where he fits as an artist and person.

The singer-songwriter is present throughout the film, albeit off-screen in the form of the narrator, guiding us through his history: growing up in Stoke-on-Trent, the son of divorced parents, his joining and dismissal from Take That, the reckless partying, his brief relationship with Nicole Appleton, and his own solo career. There is often a brutal honesty in these events, where no one (including Williams) comes off particularly well.

Insecurity, the search for self-authenticity and the desire for acceptance are the three elements that fuel the film. “Robbie became a character, something I could hide behind,” says Williams the narrator, offering some rationale for the CGI monkey used to portray the artist. In case you’ve missed the publicity, Williams is “played” by actor Jonno Davies, but in a computerised twist, special visual effects present the performer as a CGI walking-talking-singing-dancing simian.

Williams as chimpanzee is a stylisation choice which seemingly goes unnoticed by other human characters in Better Man. The film is not attempting a sci-fi tone like War for the Planet of the Apes (2017), but to my surprise makes much better use of CGI precisely for that reason.

These visual effects serve to remind the viewer of the pure artifice of the music industry and how fabricated identity – particularly that of performers who have no direct control over it – can take its toll. According to Hollywood industry magazine Variety, William’s description of himself as a performing monkey is what inspired Gracey’s aesthetic choice.

‘The worst way of dying’: scientists urge coordinated effort to stop whales getting tangled

At least 45 whales were entangled by fishing ropes and line on the east coast in 2024, and experts are calling for better management of fishing gear in Australia to prevent marine suffering.

Dr Olaf Meynecke, a marine scientist at Griffith University, said the issue of preventing whale entanglements was “largely ignored in Australia”.

Meynecke and his team recorded 45 confirmed entanglements on the country’s east coast last year, but he believes the true figure is about 100. “They’re really just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

Only about 15 whales were successfully disentangled in 2024, and improving disentanglement efforts on the east coast would require better coordination across multiple jurisdictions, Meynecke said.

Emblematic of the problem, he added, was the case of a juvenile humpback spotted near South West Rocks in New South Wales on 5 December in bad condition, dragging rope and floats from its tail.

Two weeks later, on 17 December, it was spotted further south near Terrigal. Meynecke estimated from drone footage that the whale was travelling 1.2km/h – so slowly that it was “literally floating south” with the east Australian current.

A rescue mission successfully removed the rope and floats, but the whale died and washed up days later at Lakes beach in Budgewoi. Meynecke estimated it had “dragged the fishing gear for at least two months”.

While the number of confirmed yearly entanglements is small compared to the now healthy population of humpbacks – some 40,000 whales are estimated to migrate annually along Australia’s east coast – Meynecke said preventing such incidents was an ethical issue.

The constant drag of rope and floats over time slowly causes a whale to succumb to exhaustion. “It’s probably the worst way of dying for any marine … animal,” Meynecke said.

“It takes weeks to several months until they actually die,” he said. “When they are on their migration … they would have to travel thousands of kilometres. Even the smallest float around the tail would mean, over several weeks, a loss of all energy reserves.”