Better Man

BETTER MAN

A largely pro forma musical bio-pic on the British pop sensation Robbie Williams, Better Man is only director Michael Gracey's second non-documentary feature, the first being 2017's word-of-mouth hit The Greatest Showman. And about 40 minutes into his new film, you're finally treated to evidence of what a powerfully great showman Gracey can be.

The reminder comes after we've spent roughly a third of the movie's length with traditional rags-to-riches genre tropes: scenes of Robbie, frequently teased and tormented by fellow youths, enduring a dead-end existence in England's Stoke-on-Trent; introductions to his loving, harried mum (Kate Mulvany), endlessly supportive grandma (Alison Steadman), and demanding, wannabe-entertainer father (Steve Pemberton); flashes of a teendom spent unmotivated by school and aching for the limelight. Eventually, Robbie scores his big break as the fifth member of the soon-to-be-idolized boy band Take That, an outfit that, with merely moderate success, exclusively plays gay nightclubs. But after the quintet's manager Nigel Martin-Smith (his shiftiness signified by the casting of two-time Charles Manson portrayer Damon Herriman) books his clients into a venue with a female clientele, Take That appears to go supernova in an instant. That's the moment in which Gracey and his musical absolutely knock our socks off.

If you're intrigued, you can find the first 60 seconds of the three-minute “Rock DJ” number on YouTube. But you might want to wait and splurge on a ticket to Better Man instead, because seeing this thing on the big screen was insane. Like most of Williams' and Take That's songs in the film, “Rock DJ” is energetic and catchy without being terribly memorable, which is hardly a deal-breaker for a bubbly pop tune. Gracey's cinematic staging of the song, however – a feat designed to look like a single, unbroken take – just might be unforgettable. In this dazzling explosion of intricate choreography, Buster Keaton-level slapstick, and swooping, seemingly impossible camera moves, we're treated to midtown-traffic mishaps and errant soccer balls and pogo sticks and thousands of spilled gumballs (that people dance on) and at least a half-dozen costume changes for the bandmates who never stop singing, and at no point does the momentum or invention wane. I was lifted so high by the magical joy of this “Rock DJ” sequence that my immediate thought, beyond Thank you, Mr. Gracey, was Why wasn't the movie's first 40 minutes this imaginative?! That's probably not a thought you should have, though, if a movie's lead is a CGI monkey.

Better Man

Oh, did I not mention? Yeah, Robbie Williams is “played” by prepubescent, teen, and adult versions of a computer-generated chimpanzee. (With Williams himself providing continued narration and singing his songs, it's motion-capture actor Jonno Davies beneath the visual trickery; he and young Carter J. Murphy deliver Robbie's on-screen dialogue.) While the “Why?!” of this presentational gambit is implied at the start – a performing monkey being how Williams has routinely viewed himself – the artist's simian countenance is never directly addressed in the film, and all throughout, actors interact with the faux chimp as if he were human, whether they're kissing, firing, or sharing lines of coke with him. To call this a ballsy approach would be a massive understatement, and because the CGI is so believably rendered and seamlessly incorporated, Gracey's movie-long stunt is pulled off spectacularly well. Maybe too well. Because as unusual and inspired as the monkey business is, once you adjust to and accept the conceit, which takes about two minutes, you may realize that you've already seen Better Man – possibly many, many times before.

Despite being one of the biggest-selling music artists in history, boasting 13 chart-topping studio albums in the United Kingdom and record sales of more than 75 million worldwide, the now-50-year-old Williams has shockingly little North American presence. It's consequently understandable if you haven't heard his songs, or haven't heard of him. But don't worry about entering Gracey's film with no prior knowledge of its subject: It turns out that Williams' story is the same as that of every musician who has ever been celebrated in a bio-pic. I'm exaggerating, of course, but seriously – this again? Humble beginnings leading to trickles of fame leading to skyrocketing success leading to drug and alcohol addiction leading to relationship pitfalls leading to career downfalls leading to detox leading to steady comeback leading to ultimate healing? Cast Taron Egerton as Better Man's monkey and you've got Rocketman. I understand that the musical bio-pic is a genre as cemented in its tenets as the superhero adventure and the exorcism thriller. (While I'm no big fan of A Complete Unknown, at least the Dylan movie throws us a curve by replacing substance abuse with incessant crankiness.) Yet the audacity of a chimpanzee acting as Williams' surrogate only underlines the tired conventionality and deep predictability of the narrative. I never thought I'd witness a singing simian electrify crowds of thousands and wipe blow off his nose and still find myself routinely yawning.

Raechelle Banno in Better Man

That's why it was so disheartening that, despite perfectly competent musical montages, it took a full 40 minutes for something as ravishingly exciting as “Rock DJ” to land – though, to Gracey's credit, a handful of similarly adventurous routines do transpire afterward. Following Robbie's dismissal from Take That, the director delivers an appropriately edgy/scary visualization of Williams' “Come Undone” that transforms a nighttime drive in a speeding car into an almost literal highway to Hell. Nearly the entirely of Robbie's year-long love affair with All Saints singer Nicole Appleton (a marvelous Raechelle Banno) is encapsulated in their gentle pas de deux scored to “She's the One” – it's like a miniaturized, pop-fueled, less painful variant on the first 10 minutes of Up. The sing-along, crowd-favorite ballad “Angels” serves as a moving tribute to Robbie's departed grandma. Although the metaphor gets a bit tangled when Robbie is battling hordes of lookalike fans at the 125,000-strong Knebworth Festival, “Let Me Entertain You” stands as Better Man's visual-effects coup de grâce, and the song is pretty punchy, too.

Besides, even when Gracey's latest is disappointing you or outright boring you – and when we remember to be amazed – we always have that miraculous monkey to fall back on. I may not have cared much about Chimp Robbie mending his relationships with his dad or his childhood bestie Nate (Frazer Hadfield) or Take That lead singer Gary Barlow (Jake Simmance). But it sure was a kick watching him perform prototypically cheeky boy-band dances and talk smack about Oasis' Liam Gallagher (played, in a vital caricature, by Leo Harvey-Elledge) and, in all honesty, suffer the DTs in his posh rehab facility. The actual Williams' off-screen commentary, too, is fresh and funny, and just distinct enough to make you want to learn more about this international superstar whom we in the States are weirdly ignorant about. (I would've relished some insight into why that's the case.) Amidst the frequent banality, Better Man does provide delirious delights. If only it spent more of its two hours going properly bananas.

Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl

THE LAST SHOWGIRL

Pamela Anderson has spent so many decades of public life as a punchline that's it's an absolute pleasure – a thrill, even – watching her punch back in The Last Showgirl. Running just under 90 minutes, this delicate character study by screenwriter Kate Gersten and director Gia Coppola (granddaughter to Francis, niece to Sofia, first-cousin-once-removed to Nicolas Cage) is deliberately modest, featuring numerous scenes heavy on atmosphere but light on story progression and narrative stakes. Its emotional stakes, however, feel sky-high, and that's due almost entirely to Anderson's fearless, transformative, occasionally harrowing portrayal of a woman who refuses, under any circumstances, to be a joke. My guess is that the former Playboy pinup and Baywatch star just might have reason to relate.

After serving as the decades-long headliner for the Las Vegas revue Le Razzle Dazzle, a tacky T-and-A affair full of headdresses and feather boas but with few paying customers, Anderson's Shelly Gardner learns that her lifeline on life support is officially closing to make way for a nightly circus spectacle. The Last Showgirl consequently follows Shelly as she prepares for the inevitable among the few regulars in her life: fellow cast members Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song); stage manager Eddie (Dave Bautista); cocktail-waitress confidante Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis); and, following a begrudgingly accepted invitation, estranged 22-year-old daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd). In terms of plot, that's about it. There's never a chance that the cheesy '80s relic Le Razzle Dazzle will be saved – nobody beyond Shelly wants it to be – and the one thread of legitimate narrative is less demonstrated than inferred, as the flash-forward opener and several later sequences suggest that Shelly is hoping to parlay her 30-odd years in Vegas into a grander opportunity. Instead of a tracking of events, what Coppola and her collaborators supply in abundance is mood, and unsurprisingly, it's not much different from what Aunt Sofia traditionally delivers: a bone-deep sense that you're living the characters' lives right along with them – feelings, climate, scents, and all.

Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl

Because the look of Coppola's film is so determinedly un-showy, which is ironic given the film's title, cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw likely won't get the recognition she deserves for The Last Showgirl. Yet in every interior and exterior, her supremely supple, nearly visceral lighting choices provide a gateway; you instinctively sense the serene, low-70s temperatures of a Vegas rooftop at dusk the same way you can smell the heavy dressing-room blend of perfume and sweat. And the performers, for the most part, offer this same level of you-are-there authenticity. My one caveat is reserved for Curtis, who certainly takes on her damaged-survivor role with gusto, but whose blowzy-broad act is too familiar from her guest appearances on The Bear, where I continue to think she'd do far more by doing far less. (Or at least less further away from the camera.) I do admire, though, how boldly Curtis goes for broke; she seems wholly unafraid of making Annette, with her horror-show makeup, appear ridiculous and repugnant. And for subtler turns of deeper impact we have Shipka and Bautista, the former stronger than she's ever been, and the latter as heart-melting as he was in Blade Runner 2049 and Knock at the Cabin, yet without the accompanying genre trappings.

Still, this is Anderson's triumph through and through. That initial flash-forward is shot in a tight closeup on the star's face, and as great as Anderson looks, we're immediately invited into Shelly's delusional nature when she tells the casting director she's 36 before admitting that she was lying, and she's actually 42. (Neither age is remotely believable – we eventually learn that Shelly, like Anderson, is 57.) But when asked if she has prepared music for her audition and Shelly, in her broken-little-girl voice, says “I do … I gave it to the maestro,” you hear vague echoes of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. And damn it if, by the closing credits, Anderson hasn't given a full-throttle Norma Desmond performance. She's beautiful yet worn, inspiring yet pathetic, huggable yet hands-off … . She's a staggering series of contradictions that keeps you as distanced from Shelly as Eddie and Hannah are, yet one so unabashedly seen through Coppola's empathetic viewpoint that this minor work and its transcendent lead achieve a rare, wonderful kind of emotional grandeur. Based on The Last Showgirl, I'm still not sure how much range Anderson has as an actor. I also can't see how that matters. Pamela Anderson is perfect for Coppola's movie, and it's perfect for her, and as Shelly Gardner herself would agree, one confluence like that is enough for a lifetime.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL

Due to a busier-than-expected weekend in Chicagoland, I only had availability for two cineplex visits out of the three I'd planned. So unless this is the first article of mine you've ever read, you probably get why I opted for two of 2024's potential Oscar nominees over the 2025 sequel to a Gerard Butler action thriller from seven years ago that no one, including this guy who reviewed it, remembers. (Given the $15.5-million debut of Den of Thieves: Pantera, though, I may be wrong about no one remembering.) For better or worse, I'll get to the latest Butler by next week. But in the meantime, I'm happy to add my two cents on yet another title from last year that's anticipating Academy Awards recognition this year: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. It's Aardman Animation's first stop-motion feature starring the clueless inventor and his fiercely devoted pooch since the Oscar-winning The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2005, and until catching its Netflix debut a week ago, I didn't know how much I missed those guys. Giggling on my couch until my eyes welled, in the first 15 minutes, I realized pretty quickly.

In this newest onslaught of clay-figure slapstick, priceless visual gags, and sturdy pop-culture references by that cheerfully demented genius Nick Park (co-directing here with Merlin Crossingham), two central plotlines ultimately merge into one. Its first addresses the creation of a robotic garden gnome christened Norbot, who performs all of Gromit's traditional household chores and threatens to usurp the canine as Wallace's best friend. The second concerns the zoo incarceration of the diabolical penguin Feathers McGraw – last seen in 1993's Oscar-winning short The Wrong Trousers – as he silently vows revenge and plans to use Wallace's miracle invention for retaliation. I don't know which arc made me laugh harder. I was beside myself watching Norbot recharge his electricity with a shuddering, groaning satisfaction that (advance apologies, parents) can only be called orgasmic. But I was just as giddy witnessing Feathers prep for his escape via Mission: Impossible techniques, and some classic misdirection, when he wasn't working out à la De Niro's Max Cady in Cape Fear. (The characters have similar theme music.)

As again voiced by Ben Whitehead, Wallace is deliciously daft. The mouthless pup Gromit again performs comedic astonishments through unimpeachable reaction shots. Feathers proves that a character can be riotous without benefit of a mouth or facial expressions. (His flippers speak volumes.) And by the time screenwriter Mark Burton's conceits blended into harmony, Vengeance Most Fowl achieved, for me, a sublime state of silent-meets-verbal-meets-slapstick silliness that I'll no doubt be returning to again and again. I'd argue, however, that beyond being a practically peerless wintertime delight for families, Park's latest go-around with Wallace and Gromit is also, for adult patrons of recent releases, a supremely earned one. Let's recall that Christmas Day at the cineplex brought us a tetchy Bob Dylan, a voracious vampire, a downtrodden boxer from Flint, and Nicole Kidman coerced into drinking milk in public. We deserve this, dammit!

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