It's not that the film's subject — bad boy pop star Robbie Williams — is offensive by any means, though his wry and self-effacing humor might not appeal to audiences with a low tolerance for that particular British register.

“In real life I don’t cry that much,” Williams says and then smiles. “You have a (expletive) biography about you and have the world go, ‘I’ve seen you and heard you’ and come tell me how you deal with it.'”

Nicole ends up leaving Williams (for Liam Gallagher of Oasis), part of a miserable time for the singer, who manages to destroy most of his relationships. But he reaches a career pinnacle, performing at the storied Knebworth Festival to some 375,000 adoring fans.

Robbie Williams being portrayed as a CGI ape in Better Man could have been a simple gimmick, but it actually has thematic meaning within the story.

If it’s true that your age freezes the day you become famous, then the British pop star Robbie Williams is stuck at 16. So he says near the end of “Better Man," the biopic he