Better Man (2024) on Netflix
R20242h 14mBiographyFantasyMusical
Robert Williams grows up in Stoke-on-Trent chasing the fame his father Peter wanted, while his grandmother Betty urges him to be himself. A 1990 Manchester audition puts him in a boy band.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.5/1047,534 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
Robert Williams, portrayed as a chimpanzee, grows up in Stoke-on-Trent in the 1980s, shamed in the playground and copying his father Peter, a police constable who dreams of a stage career. His grandmother Betty tells him to be true to himself. A youth production of The Pirates of Penzance lets his showboating win over an audience. By 1990 he writes lyrics and chases fame, while his friend Nate turns down a talent tryout. At a Manchester boy band audition, manager Nigel Martin-Smith dislikes Robert's old-fashioned songs but is won over by his swagger, and takes him into Take That beside Gary Barlow. Martin-Smith shortens his name to Robbie.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Better Man (2024)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
The finale's Royal Albert Hall crowd is a real audience, filmed at Robbie Williams' own concerts there on 6 and 7 November 2022, with cheap tickets sold to evening-dress attendees; a drunk crowd on the first night forced the crew to rely on the second.- The Regent Street dance number, with 500 dancers, shut down the real London street and all its businesses for four nights in March 2023, after being postponed from September 2022 by Queen Elizabeth II's death and state funeral and then by the Christmas decorations.
- Because the Knebworth scene is cut with real archive footage of the 2003 festival, Wētā obtained the concert's original lighting control files from its lighting operator and built a spatial simulation of the lighting rig so those files could drive the simulated lights.
- Robbie Williams' song "Forbidden Road", nominated for a Golden Globe, was shortlisted for the Best Original Song Oscar but was disqualified days later after it was found to incorporate material from another song.
- The soundtrack album gave Robbie Williams his fifteenth UK number one album, equalling the record for the most number one albums, held by the Beatles.
SPOILER
Because he did not want to leave his family for months of filming, Robbie Williams did motion capture for only one scene of his own biopic: the finale, in which he performs "My Way".- For the Regent Street sequence, modern LED signs were digitally replaced with 1990s signage, yet the "Spirit of Christmas" angel light sculptures, introduced to the street only in 2016, were deliberately inserted anyway, lit with period incandescent bulbs.
- Knowing Robbie Williams was little known in North America while making the film, Michael Gracey portrayed him as a primate in the hope that it would help the film resonate with American audiences.
