Best of the Best Review: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Best of the Best sticks closely to the familiar college dance movie formula, but genuine chemistry between its two leads and vibrant choreography make it a warm, watchable crowd-pleaser despite its predictability.
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Platform: Netflix
Genre: Coming-of-Age, Dramedy
Director: Lena Khan
Cast: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Priyanka Kedia, Ankur Rathee
Even as Bollywood continues to face challenges on its home turf, its songs and dance moves have clearly found a devoted audience abroad, or at least that is what Netflix’s new coming-of-age series Best of the Best wants viewers to believe.
Directed by Lena Khan, this musical dramedy centers on competitive Bollywood dance as a genuine rite of passage for Maya, played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, and Anjali, played by Priyanka Kedia, whose lifelong friendship gets tested as they navigate their first year of college together.
After a disastrous high school talent show performance earns them the nickname Drone Strikes, Maya and Anjali arrive at UCLA hoping for a fresh start.
They find one when Maya convinces Anjali to try out for Agni, a competitive Bollywood fusion dance team gearing up for the national championships, led by the confident, win-obsessed Ronak, played by Ankur Rathee. What begins as a shot at redemption slowly turns into a sharper story about identity, friendship, and family expectations.
Written by Hasan Minhaj and his Patriot Act collaborator Prashanth Venkataramanujam, Best of the Best does not try to radically reinvent the college dance movie formula, and honestly, it does not really need to. The film’s smartest move is treating South Asian culture as a living, evolving part of its characters’ everyday lives rather than simply a stylistic backdrop.
Maya is outspoken and unapologetic, often rubbing people the wrong way even when she is right, while Anjali is quieter and more compliant, dealing with an overbearing mother and constant self-doubt even as everyone around her sees her as effortlessly likable.
When Anjali gets chosen as the team’s lead over Maya, the resulting tension pulls at the heart of their friendship in genuinely familiar but effective ways, echoing the kind of best-friend rivalries seen in classic Bollywood films from the ’90s.
Where the film truly shines is in that central friendship. Ramakrishnan brings real comic energy to Maya without letting her bluntness feel like a flaw the film is punishing her for, and Kedia proves to be the film’s secret weapon, matching that energy while giving Anjali a quieter, equally compelling inner life.
Their chemistry feels genuinely established from the very first scenes, full of easy shorthand and real affection, which keeps the film emotionally grounded even when the plot hits predictable dance-movie beats.
The choreography, handled by Joya Kazi, is another clear highlight, blending Bollywood, kuthu, and classical dance traditions with contemporary collegiate energy. Both lead actresses reportedly trained intensively for the film, and that effort shows on screen, with their dance progress feeling like a genuine part of the story rather than a plot convenience.
That said, the film does stick a little too closely to familiar territory at times. A few supporting characters, particularly the mothers, could have used more depth beyond simply explaining the pressure Maya and Anjali feel, and some broader comedic beats do not land with the same precision as the film’s sharper cultural observations.
There is also an occasional sense that watching South Asian characters play out emotionally charged moments in English does not always feel entirely natural, something that pulls a few scenes slightly out of step with how these exchanges might actually unfold.
Still, Best of the Best rarely loses its momentum for long, consistently finding its way back to the strong central friendship between Maya and Anjali. It may not put a dramatic new spin on the genre, but it travels familiar territory with enough heart, humor, and visual energy to feel genuinely personal rather than simply recycled.
In the end, this is a joyful, generous crowd-pleaser more interested in the feeling of being truly seen, by your friends, your team, and yourself than in who actually wins the competition.
If gritty crime dramas are more your thing this week, our review of City Lights, Duniya Vijay’s raw Kannada thriller, is also worth a read.