‘Best of the Best’ Review: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan Leads a Bollywood-Fusion Dance Comedy That Earns Its Sparkle

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By TRH Entertainment Desk

“To be extra is to be human.” Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia lead Netflix’s Bollywood-fusion dance comedy “Best of the Best,” co-written by Hasan Minhaj. Predictable plot, critics say — but the choreography and lead chemistry carry it. Full review

Mumbai, September 2026 — Netflix’s answer to “Step Up,” co-written by Hasan Minhaj, pairs familiar dance-movie beats with a specific, well-observed South Asian-American college experience — and two lead performances critics say carry the film even when the plot doesn’t surprise.

“Best of the Best,” which began streaming on Netflix September 18, follows two lifelong best friends, Maya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and Anjali (Priyanka Kedia), as they arrive at UCLA and join Agni, the school’s nationally ranked competitive Bollywood-fusion dance team — only to find their friendship tested as individual ambition, romance, and the high stakes of the national championship start pulling them in different directions.

Directed by Lena Khan (“Flora & Ulysses”) from a script by Hasan Minhaj and his longtime “Patriot Act” writing partner Prashanth Venkataramanujam, the film opens with Maya and Anjali’s disastrous, viral-for-the-wrong-reasons high school talent show routine, according to What’s on Netflix’s coverage of the plot.

Hoping for a reset at college, they discover Agni, the school’s dance team, led by Ronak (Ankur Rathee) — a squad that took second place at the previous year’s Best of the Best national championship.

Minhaj himself appears in the film as Hamza Latif, a professor, and described the project’s core theme directly in comments to Netflix’s Tudum: “Best of the Best is a film about sisterhood, friendship, and self-acceptance.”

IndieWire was enthusiastic about the film’s tone and craft, opening with a line from the film itself — “To be extra is to be human” — and calling it “a giddy and soul-affirming story,” crediting Minhaj and Venkataramanujam’s “brilliant script” and the film’s “exhilarating theatricality.”

The review singled out both leads’ performances as a highlight of Khan’s third feature as director.

The AV Club focused specifically on how the film uses dance as a storytelling device rather than mere spectacle, noting the film “succeeds because it spends time with Maya and Anjali as they reckon with their culture as well” — highlighting a dream-sequence homage to a longstanding Indian cinema tradition, where the two friends imagine themselves performing in radically different ways depending on what each is feeling in the moment.

It praised choreographer Joya Kazi’s work, describing performances ranging “from a Bollywood tribute or two… to the high-energy kuthu… to more classical dancing,” and concluded the needle-drops and dance sequences were strong enough that “you might start grooving to (them) at home.”

Seat42F zeroed in on the central friendship as the film’s real engine, writing that Ramakrishnan “gives Maya plenty of comic bite without turning her bluntness into a one-note flaw,” while calling Kedia “the film’s secret weapon, matching Ramakrishnan’s energy while giving Anjali a quieter but equally compelling internal life.”

That chemistry, it said, is what keeps the film “emotionally grounded even when the plot hits a familiar dance-movie milestone” — stressing that the film’s biggest limitation, its predictability, “is also part of its charm.”

A Long Time Coming

The film’s origins add some context to its assured tone. TIME reported that Minhaj and Venkataramanujam originally conceived the project during pandemic lockdown, meaning “Best of the Best” spent several years in development before finally reaching Netflix.

Ramakrishnan told TIME: “Please include that Maitreyi Ramakrishnan was not just offered this role. Maitreyi Ramakrishnan worked!” — emphasizing that she auditioned for the part rather than having it handed to her based on her “Never Have I Ever” profile.

“Best of the Best” doesn’t reinvent the competitive dance-movie formula, and multiple reviews are upfront that its plot beats are largely predictable. What elevates it, according to the critical consensus, is genuine specificity: a South Asian-American college experience rendered with real cultural texture, propulsive choreography from Joya Kazi, and — most consistently praised across every review — a central friendship between Ramakrishnan and Kedia that feels lived-in and earned rather than merely functional.