Better Man: see Robbie Williams as a CGI monkey in first trailer for biopic | Robbie Williams

Robbie Williams followers have been given the primary correct glimpse of one in every of historical past’s strangest biopics: a retelling of his rise to fame with the Stoke pop singer portrayed by a CGI monkey.

Higher Man, due for launch on Boxing Day within the UK, is directed by Michael Gracey, who helmed The Best Showman and turned it right into a $435m-grossing, pop chart-topping hit.

His new movie follows Williams – performed by actor Jonno Davies through movement seize know-how – as he goes from a fractious childhood to boy-band success with Take That after which solo superstardom: 11 of his 12 studio albums topped the UK charts, as did three best hits compilations, and he holds the document for probably the most Brit awards, with 13. Alongside the best way the movie reportedly doesn’t flinch from depicting his animal aspect, together with drug issues and repellent star behaviour.

Higher Man has performed on the Telluride and Toronto movie festivals, with the Guardian’s Benjamin Lee giving it a constructive evaluate on the latter. “From afar, it appeared like an intensely annoying gimmick, maybe becoming for an entertainer who can usually be intensely annoying himself, however the movie … is a shocking winner,” he wrote. “It’s not solely Gracey’s electrical model and the central gimmick that make Higher Man really feel like an improve, it’s the disarming honesty of Williams and the way he’s allowed himself to be portrayed.”

With Williams talking in voiceover, the trailer reveals off Gracey’s knack for a song-and-dance quantity with photographs of an enormous sequence underneath Christmas lights in London’s Regent Road – in addition to a breezy, very Williams-ish perspective to unhealthy language.

Different opinions have additionally been constructive, with Selection writing: “Towards all odds, that gimmick works, distinguishing the challenge from so many different cookie-cutter pop-star hagiographies … if you wish to see a chimp doing coke with Oasis, or getting a fateful hand job in entrance of supervisor Nigel Martin Smith [played by Damon Herriman], that is your film.”