"I came out of the womb with jazz hands," pop star Robbie Williams recounts in "Better Man," his new biopic. "Which was very painful for my mum."

Badum Dum.

But also: Wow. What an image, to illustrate a man who, we learn, agonized from early childhood as to whether he had "it" — the star quality that could make him famous.

Turns out, he did. Williams became the hugest of stars in his native Britain, making 14 No. 1 singles and performing to screaming crowds (though he never gained traction in the United States.) And whatever else we learn from director Michael Gracey's brassy, audacious and sometimes utterly bonkers biopic, the key is that Williams' need to entertain was primal – so primal that it triumphed over self-doubt, depression and addiction. It should surprise nobody, then, that this film, produced and narrated by Williams (now 50), is above all entertaining.

But wait, you may be saying: Five paragraphs in, and you haven't mentioned the monkey?

Good point. The central conceit of Gracey's film, you see, is that Williams is represented throughout by a monkey — a CGI monkey, that is (actor Jonno Davies provides the captured moves and speaking voice). This decision is never explained or even referred to.

There's a clue, though, in one of Williams' opening lines: "I want to show you how I really see myself." Gracey based his film on many hours of taped interviews he did with Williams. He says the pop star told him at one point that he felt like a monkey sent out to entertain the masses — particularly in his teens as a member of the boy band Take That. It was Gracey's idea to take this idea and run with it.

We begin in 1982, in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Young Robert Williams is bad at football and... Read More