The craziest factor about this film isn’t that Robbie Williams is performed by a CGI chimp – however that it really works so properly.
PLOT: The lifetime of worldwide pop star Robbie Williams, from his early days as a member of Take That to his breakthrough as a solo artist and his struggles with habit.
REVIEW: There’s a technique that Higher Man is totally totally different from any music-based biopic you’ve ever seen. The director, Michael Gracey, depicts Robbie Williams as a CGI chimpanzee, with cutting-edge VFX from WETA, with actor Jonno Davies taking part in him in a mo-cap efficiency (though they use Williams’s distinctive eyes). The singer himself gives the narration. It’s dangerous and an enormous swing, however right here’s the factor. The craziest factor about Higher Man isn’t the truth that Robbie Williams is offered as a CGI chimpanzee however relatively that this dangerous conceit works fairly properly.
Right here’s the factor – when an iconic particular person is impersonated in a biopic, we get caught up over varied surface-level issues, with the most important being whether or not or not the actor seems just like the particular person they’re taking part in. By having Williams represented as a monkey, you recover from that side a lot faster than you’d in any other case. Surprisingly, it helps you make investments extra within the character.
It’s an impressed selection for Gracey, who has a complete background in VFX and directed one of many extra widespread current musicals, The Biggest Showman. It additionally might assist the film entice a bigger North American viewers than it might in any other case. Regardless of being a European family identify, Robbie Williams remains to be largely unknown in the USA.
This all provides as much as a extremely distinctive musical biopic that tells a narrative many readers of this web site might not be accustomed to. The film charts Williams’s rise to fame, with him initially the unhealthy boy in a band referred to as Take That, which was gigantic within the nineties all all through Europe. He was a family identify, however because the film exhibits, he was kicked out attributable to his rising substance abuse points and tensions with the remainder of the group. He re-emerged as a solo artist, along with his fame ultimately dwarfing that of the group he left, however his demons didn’t let up on him as he continued to battle mightily with habit.
The movie depicts Williams’s life in a reasonably unsparring method, with him typically coming off as a brat burning bridges relentlessly. But, the movie additionally has empathy for the truth that his best enemy was himself, visualizing his demons as different variations of himself mock him from the viewers.
Gracey depicts this all in a daring, energetic method. The film climaxes with a serious motion sequence the place Williams actually battles totally different variations of himself in a second I didn’t see coming. Via all of it, Gracey typically dazzles the viewers with set items, equivalent to an incredible musical quantity the place Williams and the remainder of Take Take dance down Regent Road performing “Rock DJ.”
Gracey throws in all the pieces however the kitchen sink to entertain his viewers. Whereas Williams might not be so well-known in North America, the film does really feel prefer it has the potential to be a stable hit, even when the hard-R score might preserve it from the viewers that made The Biggest Showman such a success. Then once more, given Williams’s struggles, may you do a watered-down PG-13 model? Who’d wish to see that?
Whereas the visible spectacle side of the film will most likely be what sells this as a possible blockbuster, it additionally has loads of coronary heart, with loads of it revolving round his fractured relationship along with his father, performed right here by Steve Pemberton, who’s a pissed off, wannabe performer who imparts his love of showbiz on Robbie.
Whereas I went into Higher Man with a raised eyebrow, cautious of the chimpanzee side, to my delight, it labored splendidly. So far as big-screen biopics go, this can be a fairly deliriously entertaining one, and I had a blast watching it. It’s undoubtedly one to maintain a watch out for.
