The biopic of British singer-songwriter Robbie Williams, Better Man, is tanking badly in US theaters. Which figures — most Americans have no idea who Robbie Williams is. His big hits in the UK and many other countries, such as “Angels” and “Millennium,” never really caught on here.

That plus the film’s one big eccentricity — having Williams represented as a tall-standing, humanoid chimpanzee — made the movie seem like it was going to be a wild ride, perhaps, or at least some sort of satire of the popular biopic form. It’s not, unfortunately, though many critics who really ought to get out more are raving about its supposed eye-popping inventiveness. And there are some flashy musical numbers, all chopped up with flashbacks and point-of-view shots of Robbie’s demons, but nothing you haven’t experienced before.

Directed by Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman), Better Man is actually such a typical biopic that audiences need not have feared being force-fed something too daring. It follows the sickeningly familiar formula of the pop music performer’s life story as laid out by dozens of movies as well as the old lurid VH1 documentary series Behind the Music. You know the drill — how some singer or band achieves fame and fortune while experiencing youthful trauma on the way up, then at the top succumbs to alcoholism and drug addiction and monstrously swollen egoism that alienates friends, bandmates, and loved ones while imperiling the celebrity’s career. But in the end, there’s some sort of redemption or a comeback.

The magnificent Simpsons episode that spoofed the series and really nails down the sententious tone of biopics in general is titled “Behind the Laughter.” It features such gems as Homer’s voice-over solemnly charting his renowned family’s decline: “Fame was like a drug. But what was even more like a drug was the drugs.”

In Better Man, Robbie Williams does his own voiceover, which is full of earnest and trite statements typical of the genre, such as “Fame is a powerful aphrodisiac. It means even ugly people can get laid.”

Jonno Davies physically enacted the role of Robbie, wearing the motion-capture suit that helped create the CGI chimp representing Williams. The singer claims in interviews that the inspiration behind the chimp is the way he identified as a “performing monkey,” acting out wildly, not fully evolved. It turns out to be the best thing about the film, because it’s an alienating effect that slightly freshens up the rest of the material. The teeth-baring grin of a chimpanzee is far more poignant when representing the forced smile of an entertainer than Robbie Williams’s own highly punchable mug, or an actor’s imitation of it, could have ever achieved.

As the film tells it, Robert Williams was a bullied working-class kid from the north of England whose showbiz-obsessed father, Peter (Steve Pemberton), inspired him to worship Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. Together, father and young son sing a hammy version of “My Way,” and Robert grows up hoping he has it, the elusive charisma that makes for success, because without it, his father tells him, “you’re a nobody.” Then Peter deserts the family to pursue a cheesy career singing oldies in halls catering to the elderly.

In a wild fluke, Robert gets chosen as the fifth member of the boy band Take That, renamed “Robbie.” He’s famous at fifteen but, eaten up with insecurity, starts drinking and drugging and gets kicked out of the band. Powered by revenge, he unearths his own hit-making abilities as a singer and songwriter and ascends to solo fame as his addictions and aggressions begin to overtake him and unravel his personal life. In the end, he strives to make amends with all those he hurt — his father; his mother, Janet (Kate Mulvany); his ex-fiancée, Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno); his best friend, Nate (Frazier Hatfield); even his late grandmother Betty (Alison Steadman), though that last one requires a graveside visit.

One of the worst aspects of these biopics is being asked to root for a celebrity who isn’t satisfied with just wealth and fame and liberty — that’s always dismissed as meaningless in the end. The celebrity wants to be seen as virtuous too. Humble and big-hearted. A fine person who truly deserves a life of luxury beyond what anyone could ever deserve. They demand everyone’s sympathy for their woes, too, and an aching appreciation for the tremendous pressure they’re under.

That any ordinary struggling worker in this world isn’t under fifty times the pressure they are, just to get by, might be given a slight nod in these films, only to be subsumed by the oceanic concern for celebrities’ happiness and self-esteem. For example, Robbie and his oldest friend, Nate, who gave up his pop music ambitions and leads a regular life of unremitting angst and toil, have a confrontation illustrating how far Robbie’s gone into celebrity self-pity:

NATE: All I wanted was for you to ask me, just once, how I’m doing with work, or my little girl . . .

ROBBIE: I’m about to walk out to 125,000 people. You’ve got no fucking idea what that feels like.

NATE: Yeah, and you’ve no idea that I earn in a month what you fucking snort in a minute.

But it’s just a blip in the narrative of Robbie’s self-redemption as he becomes a “better man.” In a brief montage-tour of the houses of everyone he’s wronged, Robbie dispenses hugs and apologies, leaving everyone starry-eyed at this famous guy’s willingness to humble himself by seeking them out at all.

There’s an appalling finale, however, that demonstrates what really matters, when Robbie puts on another gargantuan show to a packed house, just in order to put a spotlight on how wonderful a fellow he is now. All his humble prole friends and family members are present to witness tributes to Mom and Grandma, and a reconciliation with Dad in which they sing “My Way” together just like in the dear old days.

That it’s “My Way” that unites them is perfectly fitting. That absurdly bathetic and boastful old song was written by Paul Anka as a servile homage to his powerful pal Frank Sinatra, who then proceeded to bray out this tribute to himself all over our culture. It’s a perfect American anthem — macho, bragging, self-pitying, and triumphal, building to a shouting point of self-aggrandizement:

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way

With the last two words delivered as “MYYYYYYYYYYYY WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY!”

Anyway, there are a lot of people who like this sort of thing, obviously. So if you’re one, don’t fear the chimpanzee effect. It’s just the same old biopic formula, slightly monkeyed with.