Review: 'Better Nate than Ever' is pure Disney cotton candy, with a surprising twist

On one level, the new Disney Channel — I mean, Disney+ — all-ages comedy “Better Nate than Ever” is the sort of low-budget, slapped-together affair the House of Mouse cranks out when it isn’t spending 100 times as much on the next live-action adaptation of one of their animated classics.

On another level, though, “Better Nate than Ever” fits in the Disney mold of fun, uplifting stories about charming underdogs overcoming adversity. But with an important twist: The 13-year-old protagonist, played winningly by newcomer Rueby Wood, is gay.

OK, so Nate Foster never says he’s gay, and no one else calls him that. But what Nate does say leaves no doubt in his or anyone else’s mind. Also, writer-director Tim Federle — who’s the showrunner for “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” — has embedded cultural signifiers that, in another era, would be all that was necessary to spell it out: Nate’s obsession over Broadway musicals, the framed photo of Bernadette Peters on his dresser, the rainbow rabbits foot that dangles from his backpack.

Nate, in middle school in Pittsburgh, desperately wants a lead role in the school play, but barely makes the chorus — where he’ll get to hang out with his best friend, the remarkably zen Libby (Aria Brooks). It’s Libby who discovers an open audition on Broadway for child roles in “Lily & Stitch: The Musical.” (Somewhere in a cubicle in Disney’s corporate offices, some bright bulb is going, “Say, that’s not a bad idea.”)

Nate and Libby hatch a plan to sneak out of their homes and catch a Greyhound to New York, so Nate can audition. The stars align to help them: Obnoxious big brother Anthony (Joshua Bassett, from “HSM:TM:TS”) will be away at a track meet, and their parents, Sherrie and Rex (Michelle Federer and Norbert Leo Butz), are taking an anniversary spa trip. 

Once Nate and Libby hit New York, things so in unexpected directions. (Well, unexpected for them. The audience knows where this is all going.) One unexpected incident is that Nate and Libby run into Nate’s Aunt Heidi (Lisa Kudrow), a constantly striving stage actress and cater waiter. We’re told that Heidi and Sherrie haven’t spoken to each other in years — because Heidi skipped Sherrie and Rex’s wedding because she got a callback.

So the story is as straightforward as can be. What makes it fun is how Federle (who wrote the middle-school-level novel on which this is based) delivers the goods. Nate dreams in musical numbers that show him the best- and worst-case scenarios for how his New York adventure will go. And his audition scenes are bravura turns of stage-kid inventiveness. (My favorite is his monologue, quoted verbatim from an episode of “Designing Women.”)

What makes this all work are the two kid leads, Brooks (who appeared in Nickelodeon’s recent revival of its sketch show “All That”) and especially Wood, making his screen debut. (He’s not completely green, though — he played Charlie in a national tour of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” before the pandemic.) Wood gives Nate the proper levels of gumption, grit and desperation that propel him from Pittsburgh embarrassment to Big Apple hopeful. He makes “Better Nate than Ever” better than it probably deserves to be.

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‘Better Nate than Ever’

★★★

Starts streaming Friday, April 1, on Disney+. Rated PG for thematic elements, a suggestive reference and mild language. Running time: 92 minutes.