This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Never underestimate the power of a great Disney Channel original movie (DCOM). No longer really on cable, these films release to Disney Plus now, hopefully inspiring a new generation of kids with their fun stories. Personally? I would have begged for a movie about a mathlete becoming a rapper. World’s Best feels like it was made for me, but it also shows smaller Disney at its best, giving us new heroes and people we don’t see onscreen in the US very often.
Prem Patel (Manny Magnus) is our star, a junior high mathlete extraordinaire. His single mother Priya (Punam Patel) decides Prem is ready for high school math, so he goes there early in the day and returns to junior high in the afternoon. But with the long summer vacation comes other new changes, like his best friend Jerome (Max Malas) ditching Prem to spend time with his new girlfriend and new friends in the popular dance troupe (Liam Wignall and Chris River). After a math assignment where Prem’s asked to come up with the equation for him, he realizes he doesn’t really know; and at that moment, his dead dad Suresh (Utkarsh Ambudkar) appears as something between an imaginary friend and a midlife crisis apparition to help Prem figure himself out.
Utkarsh Ambudkar I guess got sick of waiting for the world to see how special he is, and wrote his own awesomeness. As his son’s projection, Ambudkar wills World’s Best forward with his star wattage and magnetism. It would be so easy for the multitalented actor/singer to write a lead performance script here, but he smartly deploys his talents slowly. As Prem/the audience learns more about Suresh/Ambudkar, the more we like what we see, as Ambudkar shows how he can rap/be funny/be serious, basically whatever the movie needs to deliver its points, especially in the really exciting musical sequences. Maybe best of all Ambudkar is happy playing a team player, elevating Manny Magnus and Punam Patel when the characters/actors look a little shaky.
The rest of the script is your standard DCOM material: shy tween with one parent breaks out of their shell. The World’s Best stuff in this script has to do with Prem and his family. Priya is a nice update to an old Disney trope: Punam Patel has fun time playing a mom with a sneaky fun past she keeps hidden just enough to make the audience curious, and the real emotional strength of the movie is how both Prem and Priya have been coping with the loss of their loved one, and how Priya really struggles with Prem because he reminds her of her lost husband. All the school stuff walks that DCOM line of being recognizable to kids but hilariously ludicrous to parents (dance troupe bullies? high schoolers eager to make friends with tween mathletes? HA!) that keep the movie fun when it’s pretty stupid.
Take heed, streamers and movie producers. Utkarsh Ambudkar needs to be in more stuff. Dude had to Rocky his own hip hop career to get a juicy role. Come on, you can do better!