Director: Michael Gracey
Michael Gracey's musical biopic tells the rise of pop star Robbie Williams using one bold visual trick: an all-CGI chimpanzee stands in for its human subject at every age.
What is Better Man about?
Better Man follows Robbie Williams from a working-class childhood in Stoke-on-Trent through his teenage years fronting the boy band Take That, and into a solo career defined by stadium tours, chart records, and a very public battle with addiction and self-doubt. Rather than cast an actor to play Williams literally, director Michael Gracey renders him throughout as a photorealistic chimpanzee, a device meant to capture how the singer has described feeling less evolved than the people around him. Told with Williams' own blunt narration, the film moves through triumph and collapse at the pace of one of his arena shows.
Cast & crew
Jonno Davies performs the physical and vocal work behind the chimpanzee version of Robbie Williams, with Robbie Williams himself narrating and singing throughout. Raechelle Banno, Damon Herriman, Steve Pemberton, Alison Steadman, Kate Mulvany and Frazer Hadfield fill out the people around him, bandmates, family, and industry figures who chart his rise from teenage pop idol to global solo star.
Context & significance
Better Man premiered in 2024 as one of the more unusual entries in the modern music biopic genre, built around elaborate choreography, arena-scale concert recreations, and visual effects work rather than a conventional lead performance. Coming from Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and China as a co-production, it leans on the scale of a big studio musical while staying rooted in one performer's very personal account of fame. Its 135-minute runtime covers roughly three decades of that story.
Where & how to watch
Better Man streams on K-Time with a free account login, and the Persian dub and Persian subtitles carry both the dialogue and the film's musical numbers for Farsi-speaking audiences. K-Time's interface is built around Farsi navigation and search, so finding and following a music-driven biopic like this one stays simple for viewers across the Iranian diaspora, from the homepage down to the player controls.