Better Man, the musical biopic in which human British pop star Robbie Williams is played by a CGI chimpanzee, may not be the best movie of 2024/2025, but it certainly is the most movie. The sheer number of things that happen to Chimp Robbie (and that Chimp Robbie inflicts on other people) beggars belief. And what’s most astonishing of all may be the fact that the movie works. You will feel bad for this ape, even when he’s picking fights with his girlfriend because Oasis made him insecure. You will believe an ape can not only snort cocaine, he can snort Scarface-like mountains of the stuff while dodging calls from his mother. You will believe a heterosexual ape can find community in a human gay club. And you might cry when the ape does inner-child work in rehab.
But maybe you need more convincing. Maybe, for you, there is no inherent appeal in watching the life story of someone you’ve never heard of. Even if he’s a monkey. Even if that monkey gets tattoos that peek through his monkey fur. To fully capture the spectacle that is Better Man, here is a spoiler-filled, minute-by-minute breakdown of everything that happens in its 135-minute run time.
(Side note: I will be referring to Better Man’s version of Robbie Williams as “the monkey” from here on out, despite him clearly being a chimpanzee and not a monkey. Williams says this version of him is the unevolved “performing monkey” he saw himself as before getting sober, so this misnomer is monkey-approved.)
26 seconds: First time someone says “fuck.”
2 minutes: A smoking child tells the monkey, also a child, he’s a nobody.
4 minutes: The first time the monkey and his dad say their shared catchphrase, “Light ’em up!,” while combing their hair. He will say this line 11 more times; I counted.
9 minutes: The monkey’s dad walks out on the family.
12 minutes: The monkey imagines performing a duet with his dad, only to realize he’s completely alone, and I cried???
12 minutes, 39 seconds: The monkey is now 15 and has a perm.
16 minutes: The monkey auditions for Take That.
24 minutes: The monkey implies the manager of Take That was doing TLC-style “using the advance to embezzle from the group” fiscal malfeasance.
26 minutes: Take That’s manager changes the monkey’s name from Robert to Robbie. The band performs at a gay club.
31 minutes: A girl gives the monkey a hand job in public, thinking he’s bandmate Gary Barlow.
32 minutes: Take That gets a record deal because hand-job girl’s dad runs RCA.
33 minutes: The monkey hops around London on a pogo stick. He is ironing his hair straight now.
34 minutes: The monkey humps the face of an elderly lady on a mobility scooter. The monkey’s bandmate Howard Donald now has white-boy dreads :(
36 minutes: While showing off merch, the monkey’s manager says, “And for our ethnic fans, we have Take That babushka dolls.”
43 minutes: The monkey’s dad sneaks a girl into his hotel room and drops a deuce in his toilet. Dad then scolds the monkey for being on Prozac. “How can you not know who you are when there are hundreds of people screaming your name?” he asks the monkey.
48 minutes: The monkey does coke in his car before getting kicked out of Take That in a band meeting.
50 minutes: The monkey buckles a watermelon safely into his car.
54 minutes: The monkey drowns in a sea of paparazzi (metaphor).
55 minutes: The monkey wears a mouse costume. But he’s not a mouse, he’s a monkey!
59 minutes: The monkey proposes to All Saints’ Nicole Appleton in their candle-filled apartment.
1 hour, 1 minute: Nicole Appleton is pressured to abort her and the monkey’s baby by All Saints’ manager.
1 hour, 3 minutes: The monkey goes bleach blond, which we’d now correctly understand as a cry for help. Because he is a monkey, the bleach job covers all his fur, from head to toe.
1 hour, 5 minutes: Liam Gallagher jump scare!
1 hour, 10 minutes: The monkey’s grandmother, showing the first signs of dementia, reveals that the only reason the monkey’s dad ever got back in touch with him is because she forced him to.
1 hour, 15 minutes: The monkey plays bongos like Jack Quaid in Oppenheimer.
1 hour, 19 minutes: A success montage during which the monkey ODs twice, culminating in a duet with Tom Jones at the BRIT Awards.
1 hour, 23 minutes: The monkey is told he will be headlining Knebworth, a festival Wikipedia assures me is real.
1 hour, 25 minutes: The monkey’s dad suggests drinking as a way to solve his problems.
1 hour, 27 minutes: The monkey says he’s slept with four of the five Spice Girls.
1 hour, 30 minutes: The monkey doesn’t notice his fiancée leaving him because he’s too busy doing heroin.
1 hour, 32 minutes: The monkey learns his beloved grandmother has died, right before doing Top of the Pops. This signifies the hollowness of fame.
1 hour, 40 minutes: The monkey finally confronts his dad for being awful.
1 hour, 49 minutes: While playing Knebworth (real?), the monkey imagines his inner critic as all his past selves. The Other Monkeys fight him in a giant battle royale. One monkey has no skin and wields a giant mace; it’s very Dark Souls.
1 hour, 49 minutes, 59 seconds: The monkey stabs his child self to death, and I cried again???
1 hour, 51 minutes: The monkey is stopped mid–suicide attempt by the spirit of his grandmother in heaven, coming to him as a beam of sunlight.
1 hour, 53 minutes: The monkey kicks heroin.
1 hour, 54 minutes: The monkey attends an AA meeting. “I’m unevolved,” he shares.
1 hour, 55 minutes: The monkey gives himself an emotionally significant buzz cut. But unlike when he went blond, he doesn’t shave his whole body.
1 hour, 58 minutes: The monkey does the ninth step of a 12-step program, making amends.
2 hours, 2 minutes: The monkey duets with his dad onstage at the Royal Albert Hall. He makes peace with his inner-critic monkeys, and I cried a third time????
2 hours, 7 minutes: The monkey says the last line of the film, “Fuck yourselves.”