Which Best of the Best Character Are You?

Learn More About Best of the Best

Best of the Best has become one of Netflix's biggest hits of the fall, currently sitting as the most-watched film on the platform worldwide. The coming-of-age comedy follows Maya and Anjali, two childhood best friends played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia, as they join UCLA's competitive Bollywood-fusion dance team. What they expect to be a fun creative outlet quickly turns out to be a far more cutthroat world than either of them anticipated, as they chase a national championship against teams with far more experience and far bigger egos.

The film has been praised for balancing genuine dance spectacle with a sincere story about friendship under pressure. Ramakrishnan, best known for her breakout role in Never Have I Ever, brings a grounded vulnerability to Maya's arc, while Kedia's Anjali provides both comic relief and emotional ballast as the friend who's more interested in enjoying the ride than winning at all costs. Hasan Minhaj rounds out the cast as Professor Latif, a demanding instructor whose tough-love approach pushes the team harder than they thought they could go.

What sets Best of the Best apart from a typical dance-competition movie is its specific cultural lens. The Bollywood-fusion dance scene has a passionate, tightly-knit community built around blending classical and contemporary styles, and the film treats that world with real specificity rather than using it as generic competition-movie backdrop. The choreography sequences have drawn particular praise for their energy and technical ambition, giving the film a genuine sense of spectacle that holds up even outside the emotional stakes of the story.

Time magazine's coverage of the film noted that it manages to go both deep and big at once, finding real emotional stakes in the friendship between Maya and Anjali while still delivering the crowd-pleasing dance sequences audiences show up for. The supporting ensemble, including Chaneil Kular's Arjun and Ankur Rathee's Ronak, gives the team a lived-in dynamic that makes the group feel like an actual community rather than a collection of competition-movie archetypes.

Whether you've already watched it twice or you're still catching up on why it's dominating the Netflix charts, this quiz will sort you into the teammate whose drive, loyalty, and competitive style matches your own.

The film also arrives at a moment when South Asian representation in mainstream Netflix comedies has been steadily expanding, and Best of the Best fits into that wave while carving out its own specific niche within the dance-movie genre. Rather than treating Bollywood-fusion as a novelty, the film immerses viewers in the actual mechanics and culture of the competitive circuit, from rehearsal politics to the specific pressures of representing your college on a national stage.

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan's casting in particular has been treated as something of a full-circle moment for fans who followed her breakout in Never Have I Ever, giving her a meatier, more physically demanding role than her earlier television work allowed. Alongside Kedia, Kular, and Rathee, the ensemble's chemistry has been repeatedly singled out in reviews as the film's strongest asset, with critics noting that the cast reads like an actual friend group rather than actors hitting marks.