Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Jen Maravegias | Film | September 25, 2026
Best of the Best is the story of two lifelong friends, Maya (Never Have I Ever’s Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and Anjali (Priyanka Kedia, Disclosure Day), who get into UCLA together and join the school’s esteemed Bollywood fusion dance team. You know how these types of friendships go in movies. One girl is “the pretty one” who everyone likes. The other is abrasive and difficult. But they love and support each other, vowing to always have each other’s backs. Until, of course, something (or someone) gets in the way.
It’s a fun watch. A light comedy in the vein of Pitch Perfect. The first one that got everyone talking about a cappella groups. Not the terrible third one. Written by Hasan Minhaj and his Patriot Act collaborator, Prashanth Venkataramanujam, and directed by Never Have I Ever director Lena Khan, Best of the Best touches on themes of friendship, self-acceptance, and the pitfalls of walking around with a chip on your shoulder the size of a small country.
Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is very funny, deftly serving Minhaj’s trademark sarcastic humor in the script. She and Priyanka Kedia underwent months of Bollywood dance training to prepare for their roles, and it paid off. The dance sequences, helped by the supporting cast, are great. Plot-wise, it doesn’t break any new ground. But the familiar ground it treads is popular for a reason. Best of the Best is a feel-good, coming-of-age movie.
The real groundbreaking parts of Best of the Best are that the entire cast (except for a couple of token white boys who are their own running gag) is South Asian and its focus on the decidedly not-white-centered art of Bollywood dancing.
There aren’t many movies getting made like that these days. Best of the Best didn’t get theatrical distribution, and I haven’t seen much promotional material for it from Netflix. But it’s on there, currently sitting in the number three slot of the top movies in the U.S. behind Top Gun: Maverick and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. That’s a lot of testosterone to balance out. And Best of the Best does that well.
More interesting perhaps is the inspiration behind the movie.
In 2024, Nat Geo bought the rights to a mini-series produced by Hasan Minhaj called Bollywood Dance U. It follows two Bollywood Fusion dance teams at UT Dallas during the 2022 Collegiate Bollywood Fusion Competition season. Yes, that is actually a thing. And the kids who participate are dedicated to their art. They commit to ten hours a day of rehearsals, on top of full class loads, with a tight competition schedule against over a hundred other schools across the country. They risk their grades, injuries, and their parents’ approval for a chance to win the 1st-place cup at Legends, the national championships. It’s a lot!
Bollywood Dance U is an antidote to the discourse surrounding how dumb, lazy, and unprepared college kids are these days. That’s the thing about the arts: it’s the cure for ambivalence. And it always makes for a fascinating counter-narrative.
Nat Geo ultimately passed on the project. So, Minhaj’s team bought the rights back from the network and decided to distribute it themselves. All four episodes are currently available on his YouTube channel as one post that acts as a fundraiser for The Desi Dance Network (DDN), the nonprofit that runs the Legends competition.
You can watch all of the episodes here.
And then watch Best of the Best on Netflix to get the sparkly, Hollywood version.
