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Better Nate Than Ever Movie Review

Better Nate Than Ever is a 2022 family musical comedy film directed by Tim Federle and starring Rueby Wood, Aria Brooks and Lisa Kudrow. It’s a solid flick.

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“Love you like a sister!“

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13-year-old Nate Foster fantasizes about becoming a big Broadway star. He and his best friend Libby mastermind a daring trip to New York City to audition for a musical. This movie is your pretty standard kids flick with the only unique addition being its gay-friendly narrative. There is a lot of talk nowadays in America whether or not movies should promote homosexuality to children, but this movie evades that issue by depicting a gay tween pursuing a career in Broadway, but not focusing on his sexuality as he is a child after all.

That was important. It made the movie more believable and wholesome. The metaphor about Broadway is clear, but the movie did not go overboard with it. And I just loved the characters here. Nate is such a lovable kid, full of heart, spunk and big dreams. Libby is also wonderful and their friendship is sweetly endearing. It was great that the movie focused on her story as well and her eventual realization that she should be an agent made for an interesting subplot.

But Lisa Kudrow stole this movie. This is probably her best movie role to date as she delivered such a great, wonderful performance as this kind aunt who eventually realizes that career isn’t everything and that family is important. Lisa is so terrific and the scenes between her and the kids are so touching that eventually the issue of the two women’s fraught relationship being rushed was at least somewhat diminished.

Better Nate Than Ever is a musical, but it’s the kind of musical where the songs come during the auditions and the dream sequences and the characters don’t really sing their feelings, which was an interesting choice. The Guys and Dolls-inspired musical number was the first and by far the best one. It was lively, kinetic and beautifully orchestrated. Others are solid, but never coming close to that level of quality.

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This is a Disney+ movie and it shows unfortunately. Not only are the production and the overall story very small in scale, but the film’s dialogue and script are way too childish at times. Many plot points come off as ridiculous contrivances (The aunt happens to be in NYC in the same place as the kids, really?), but the third act is full of those overly sappy, extremely emotionally manipulative moments of love confessions. A more realistic and more mature approach would have done wonders for this story. This is why ‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’ was much better.