Hasan Minhaj and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan headline Netflix’s Bollywood-fusion dance comedy
Best of the Best, a coming of age comedy about two friends who join a cutthroat college Bollywood-fusion dance team, is on Netflix now. Maitreyi Ramakrishnan trained for four months to carry the choreography; Hasan Minhaj co-wrote it and plays the professor.
Netflix’s Best of the Best, a coming of age comedy built around competitive Bollywood-fusion dance, is out now, and it is pulling a fast search spike as viewers look up its cast. It stars Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Hasan Minhaj, with Priyanka Kedia, and is directed by Lena Khan.
The setup
The film follows two childhood best friends, Maya (Ramakrishnan) and Anjali (Kedia), who join UCLA’s competitive Bollywood-fusion dance team and find the road to the national championship far more cutthroat than they expected. Minhaj plays a professor, Hamza Latif, and co-wrote the screenplay with Prashanth Venkataramanujam.
At a glance
- The film
- Best of the Best, a Netflix coming of age Bollywood-fusion dance comedy
- The leads
- Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia, with Hasan Minhaj as a professor
- Behind it
- Directed by Lena Khan; Minhaj co-wrote the screenplay
- The prep
- Ramakrishnan did four months of Bollywood dance training from scratch
Four months of dance
Ramakrishnan came in with, by her own account, nonexistent dance experience, and closed the gap with four months of Bollywood dance training. Director Lena Khan has said she told her to bring “Channing Tatum energy” to the lead, a nod to how much the part leans on physical performance.
Why it lands now
A mainstream Netflix comedy that puts Bollywood-fusion dance and a South Asian ensemble at the center, rather than the margins, is its own kind of news, and the release day search surge suggests the pitch is connecting. Whether it holds in the Netflix top ten past opening weekend is the number to watch next.
