Netflix's 'Best of the Best': Bollywood-Fusion Dance Comedy — SkimNews
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- "Best of the Best" is Netflix's Bollywood-fusion dance comedy streaming September 18, marking director Lena Khan's third feature following 'The Tiger Hunter' and Disney's 'Flora & Ulysses'
- Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia co-star as Maya and Anjali, UCLA freshmen and computer science majors whose friendship is tested by competitive Bollywood-fusion dance and Maya's viral 'Drone Strike' mishap from a high-school contest
- Hasan Minhaj co-wrote the script with Prashanth Venkataramanujam and appears on screen as a faculty sponsor, with Janina Gavankar as Anjali's mom and Lilly Singh making a cameo
- The review singles out costume designer Elisabeth Vastola for distinguishing 'cultural reference and costume-pageant shorthand,' letting streetwear and themed competition designs coexist without flattening South Asian identity
- Ankur Rathee plays team captain Ronak and Chaneil Kular plays Maya's love interest, with production designer Henry Dunn and cinematographer Adam Carboni earning praise for making UCLA feel like a real social ecosystem rather than a generic backdrop
Why it matters: Khan's third feature extends her trajectory from a 2016 indie debut to a Netflix-anchored South Asian-led comedy, and the film's deliberate refusal to collapse South Asian identity into a single visual shorthand — articulated through costumes, dance concepts, and dual-screen comedy — positions it as a streaming title with genuine cultural specificity rather than a generic collegiate dance pastiche.
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