Other than the uncomfortably honest Robbie Williams biopic Better Man and the parodical Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, these films seldom break out of the finely carved mold of image-rehabilitating cinematic exercises.
You’ll get your occasional Better Man, Rocketman, and tick, tick… BOOM!: What makes these projects stand out amongst the rest is their ability and willingness to portray the artist in question from a vulnerable lens.
The best musician biopics—movies like Rocketman, Elvis, and Better Man—never forget their subjects are mortal.
…it still fails to creatively play with an overdone genre to the levels of surprisingly subversive and emotionally resonant biopics like the Elton John musical Rocketman or even the Robbie Williams-is-a-CGI-chimp romp Better Man.
It’s a genre that favors bold swings in the form of something like Better Man, or even the bombastic insanity of Elvis.