‘Better Man’ is a tantalizingly good Robbie Williams biopic, produced by the man himself, which is not without clever insights about the addictive allure of fame and the reason some people yearn to be in the limelight at whatever cost. As with many biopics of music icons, we see the role that family plays in the need for connection and as an impetus for the kind of stardom which ironically means that family is prized out from the ruthless, single-minded zest for performance and adulation that follows.

Having Williams, a self-confessed ‘cheeky chappie’, played by a monkey is a gamble that pays off. Everyone else in the film is played by humans, and the monkey has all of the characteristics and movements that Williams possesses, meaning that the use of an animal only serves to underscore and highlight Williams’s difference and uniqueness in this no-holds-barred biopic which is not afraid to penetrate the lows (including a dependence on drugs) as well as the highs that are ultimately two sides of the same coin. Williams has always been a mischievous entertainer, and the role of the animal certainly sets this apart from other more pedestrian biopics of famous musicians.

There is a moving focus on the way Williams’s father, played by Steve Pemberton, abandoned the family when Williams was young in order to pursue a career as a lounge-singer and entertainer, and was not exactly successful to this end. But Williams wants to understand and please his father, and ends up trouncing him, in this very Oedipal-like tale which doesn’t only have to please fans of Williams. Using a monkey is very revealing because it links to something Williams has himself spoken of in interviews relating to how he sees himself and his own evolutionary journey. Is he an ape trapped in a human body, or a human encased in a chimpanzee’s body?

There is certainly something primal about the Williams story, for whom Take That was a means to an end to superstardom. Along the way there are some genuinely funny references to how he saw his fellow band members, and it is pretty clear that there was friction along the way, as with everyone, outside of what is portrayed as a genuinely loving relationship with his nan, played by veteran Mike Leigh actress Alison Steadman. Some reviewers have even likened these parts of the film to that of a Leigh ensemble. It does not always add up to the sum of its parts, but ‘Better Man’ is never less than creative – and it fuels the notion that Robbie Williams has always been able to put his own idiosyncratic twist on anything he touches.