As if he wasn't massive already, Robbie Williams now has a feature movie about him! He's had TV docs in the past, and it's not clear why this one's different, but it is certainly nice to see the performance clips on a big screen at least. Filmmaker Hill follows Robbie and band on his European tour and actually manages to spin out a story amid all the self-analysis and deprecation. Before the tour begins, Robbie is having serious doubts--he's clean from drugs and alcohol for the first time and facing the fact that he really dreads performing, hates all his songs and just wishes he could be a regular nobody again. Then it happens: He starts enjoying himself.

There's something disarming and rather charming about the way Robbie picks himself apart, even though he does so in an extremely self-aware way that isn't quite believable (is he merely play-acting the role of disillusioned pop star ... at age 27?). But all his whinging is very funny, as are the tiny glances the camera catches during his performances. The film itself is a bit too intensely shaped--trying to be both reverential and revelatory at the same time and falling somewhere in between. A more dispassionate approach would have made it much more intriguing. As it is, the concert footage is far more telling than all Robbie's earnest chats to camera. The best concert footage is his high-energy duet "Kids" (Kylie's on video); and a comedy tantrum in a Stuttgart hotel room tells us more about this film than the filmmaker may have intended. In the end I'm not sure we learn anything new that we already don't know--he is after all the biggest star in Britain today, with a face more ubiquitous than Diana in her prime, and countless singles in regular airplay on the radio. Even if he does nothing else for the rest of his life, he can live off the royalties of his fantastic ballad "Angels" (sung by the concert audience over the closing credits). And if he really wants to be a nobody, he can always go to America, where he's still pretty much unknown. Probably because you can never quite take him seriously. Like this documentary about him.

adult themes, language

29.Nov.01