The idea is in the end a high-tech promise that this can be a film which needs to maintain the warts of its star, inside although they may often be, seen always. In idea, it offers heft to what quantities to a different movie star’s poor little wealthy boy issues after he will get huge by the highest of Act Two. Your mileage would possibly range whether or not it succeeds at having and consuming that cake, however no less than it makes the idea of such a dessert in a multiplex overstuffed with bakeries appear novel.
In any other case, the movie is usually the rags-to-riches story you would possibly anticipate, particularly in case you are sufficiently old to recollect VH1’s Behind the Music portraits of assorted pop stars. Williams is launched as an ape born to a human father who is way extra boorish than the primate baby may ever be: Peter Williams (Steve Pemberton). Peter trains his son to consider that you’re both born with “it” or not. Frank Sinatra had “it.” Dean Martin too. Daddy additionally thinks he has it, despite the fact that he walks out on his son earlier than he’s 10 years outdated in order to pursue a profession as a failed pub comedian.
That is presumably the kernel of Robert’s determined must please, and to punish the animal inside. Whereas nonetheless being lovingly raised by his mom (Kate Mulvany) and grandmother (Alison Steadman), adolescent Robert (Jonno Davies for presumably a lot of the film in a motion-capture go well with) yearns to ditch them as quickly as potential and grow to be a member of the early ‘90s boy band, Take That. It’s this musical act that turns Robert into “Robbie,” and which is depicted as much more humiliating with their short-shorts and banal cafeteria-club music than any cartoonish monkey enterprise could possibly be. Robbie after all abruptly sunders that relationship as effectively after bristling on the artistic monotony of being a glorified backup dancer—a destiny shortly commuted when the opposite members of Take That kick him out.
What follows is a regular laundry checklist of musical biopic beats: battle minimize quick by sudden “in a single day” success; the girlfriend whose life Williams would grow to be a drain on, right here personified by fellow pop star Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno); a couple of different musical cameos that can have audiences chuckling, together with a vicious however in all probability deserved dig at Oasis entrance man Liam Gallagher (Leo Harvey-Elledge); and Robbie’s inevitable bottoming out. However the intelligence of Higher Man’s script is how flippant it’s. Not solely does it go bananas with Williams’ look, however even bits just like the inevitable climactic “live performance of the star’s life” proving to not be any climax in any respect as Robbie spends it excessive as a kite and haunted by visions of his youthful self as a child primate and adolescent twerker stalking him within the viewers just like the Ghosts of Christmas Previous.
It’s in the end Higher Man’s recognition that audiences know the beats they’re strolling by way of, and its eagerness to calmly play with them, if by no means really subvert them, which provides Gracey’s film rhythm. It’d solely be dancing to a well-recognized hook designed for optimum radio play (or Spotify at this time), nevertheless it makes use of those self same chords effectively.
Largely although it advantages from the apparent novelty of the consequences. Whereas the advertising and press has blurred how a lot of the efficiency within the film is younger Davies, how a lot is the real-life Williams, and/or whether or not most of it ought to be credited to the digital artists at Wētā, the top result’s nonetheless efficient; cumulatively, it lulls you into pitying this poor put-upon beastie. The mixed inventive efforts by no means as soon as flip into Barnum and Bailey pantomime, even in scenes of Williams dancing with Banno’s Appleton earlier than a sea of fireworks. As an alternative you grow to be invested within the animated character’s plight as he offers with actual demons like remorse over the lack of a grandparent, or the difficult resentments that come from a fiancée being pressured by her file label into getting an abortion.
