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‘I hate this movie, and I haven’t even seen it’ – Americans won’t let a chimp Robbie Williams entertain them

Better Man is a genuinely good movie but it’s bombing – and now his song has been disqualified from the Oscars too

Those seven hours of documentary can be added to the two biographies of Williams by the legendary Smash Hits writer Chris Heath, which are two of the best books about fame’s destabilising effect on the human psyche you’ll ever read. Still, it’s far from perfect: the overreliance on CGI renders scenes about abortion and self-harm strangely Pixar-fied, and the voiceover from Williams, delivering unexceptional post-hoc reflections about his depression and addiction, suggests that while he has found the right director to tell his story, he could do with a better shrink. But, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, there was good news on the horizon: “Among the current crop of British acts, there are high hopes for Robbie Williams, a former member of ‘boys band’ Take That who is being carefully groomed for his US launch beginning next month”.

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