‘Best of the Best’ Review: A High-Energy Bollywood Dance Comedy That Deserves a Crowd

Lena Khan’s ‘Best of the Best’ channels the exuberance of college dance movies and the competitive spirit of ‘Step Up 2: The Streets,’ making a strong case for a communal Netflix viewing.

Some movies are designed to be watched quietly, individually and on demand. Others seem to reach beyond the screen, asking for laughter from a roomful of people, applause when the music swells and a shared reaction when the dancers finally take the floor. Lena Khan’s “Best of the Best” belongs firmly in the second category. It is a Bollywood dance-off college comedy built around the kind of energy that can make a familiar story feel newly infectious.

The central appeal is easy to recognize. Like the most durable dance movies, the film is less interested in presenting competition as a dry contest than in turning it into an emotional language. Movement becomes a way for characters to express ambition, confidence, rivalry and belonging. The dance floor is not merely a setting for choreography; it is the place where the movie’s personalities become clearest and where its broad comic spirit can gather momentum.

That combination gives “Best of the Best” an immediate point of comparison with “Step Up 2: The Streets.” The comparison is not necessarily about identical plots or characters. It is about the pleasure of watching young performers collide with an established system, form alliances and prove themselves through performance. Viewers who responded to the earlier film’s mix of college drama, dance battles and unapologetic crowd-pleasing will likely understand what Khan is aiming for here.

“Best of the Best” appears to know that dance movies work best when they take their own excitement seriously. The comedy can be broad, the conflicts can be familiar and the emotional turns can be easy to anticipate, but none of that matters if the film does not believe in the release that comes when music, movement and personality come together. Khan’s film is presented as a movie with that belief. Its appeal lies in its willingness to be buoyant rather than self-conscious.

The college setting is especially useful for this kind of story. It places characters at a stage of life when identity still feels flexible and public performance can seem like a form of personal reinvention. A competition offers an obvious structure, but it also creates a social pressure cooker. Different personalities must share space, negotiate rivalries and decide what they are willing to risk in front of their peers. Even without relying on complicated mythology, a college dance-off can turn a simple routine into a statement about who belongs and who deserves to be seen.

That is part of why the film’s genre blend matters. It is not simply a dance picture, and it is not simply a campus comedy. The comedy gives the story its looseness and accessibility, while the dance competition supplies forward motion and spectacle. The two modes can reinforce one another when handled well. A joke can establish a character before a routine reveals that character’s seriousness; a showdown can become funnier because the people involved are so emotionally invested in it.

The result, as described by the film’s reception, is a crowdpleaser in the clearest sense of the word. That designation should not be treated as faint praise. Crowd-pleasing entertainment requires precision. A movie has to understand when to push the energy higher, when to let a character land a joke and when to give the audience enough anticipation before a performance. The pleasure is collective, but creating it is not accidental. It depends on rhythm, tone and a willingness to deliver the expected highs without apologizing for them.

What makes the Netflix release slightly ironic is that the film’s strongest quality seems to be communal. Streaming has made it easier for viewers to find movies that might once have had a more limited theatrical life, but it has also changed the circumstances in which many films are experienced. A dance comedy built to produce a room’s worth of excitement is arriving on a service associated with solitary viewing, interrupted attention and the temptation to watch from a phone or laptop.

That does not make Netflix an unsuitable home for “Best of the Best.” The platform can give a film broad access, and a viewer can still create a shared experience by watching with friends or family. But the release invites a question about what is lost when a movie with such overt audience appeal is encountered alone. A joke may receive only a private smile. A major dance sequence may be appreciated intellectually rather than felt as a communal event. The film can still work, but its ideal conditions may be harder to reproduce.

The contrast is familiar to anyone who has watched a dance movie with an enthusiastic audience. The genre depends on anticipation as much as execution. Viewers recognize the emotional shape of the big performance, but they still want to experience the buildup, the hesitation and the final burst of confidence together. The audience’s response becomes part of the scene’s energy. “Best of the Best” seems to be the kind of movie that benefits from that feedback loop, even if its primary distribution method does not naturally provide one.

Khan’s role is important because the director is working within a form that comes with established expectations. A dance-off story must provide competition, but competition alone is not enough. The characters need to make the routines matter, and the comedy needs to keep the film from becoming a sequence of disconnected showcases. The review’s enthusiasm suggests that Khan understands the balance between the event itself and the personalities surrounding it.

That balance is also what separates a lively genre entry from a collection of dance numbers. The best examples of this kind of film make the choreography feel like a continuation of the characters rather than an interruption of the plot. Every performance carries some combination of challenge, self-definition and response. The audience is not watching movement simply because it is impressive. It is watching because the movement changes the social situation around it.

For general audiences, that accessibility may be one of “Best of the Best’s” greatest strengths. Viewers do not need to be specialists in dance, familiar with Bollywood conventions or deeply invested in college-set stories to understand the basic pleasure. The film’s language is physical and immediate. Rivalry is visible, confidence is visible and the difference between holding back and committing fully can be communicated without lengthy explanation.

At the same time, the Bollywood framing gives the movie a broader tonal identity than a conventional campus comedy. Bollywood dance cinema has long treated performance as a space where heightened emotion, spectacle and humor can coexist. That sensibility allows a movie to be sincere and playful at once. “Best of the Best” is positioned within that tradition while also drawing on the recognizable architecture of the American dance movie: the campus, the contest and the pressure to show what a team can do.

The comparison with “Step Up 2: The Streets” therefore works as a useful shorthand for the film’s intended experience. It signals movement, youthful competition and an emphasis on performance as payoff. It also tells potential viewers not to approach “Best of the Best” expecting an austere character study or a restrained comedy. The movie’s virtues appear to be its enthusiasm and its willingness to embrace the emotional directness of the form.

That directness can be refreshing. Contemporary movies sometimes treat open-hearted entertainment as something that requires an ironic defense. A film may signal that it knows its formula is familiar, or it may soften its biggest emotional moments with a joke. A crowdpleaser like “Best of the Best” does not seem to need that distance. Its premise promises a straightforward pleasure: people who care intensely about dance are placed in a competitive environment and asked to rise to the occasion.

Of course, familiarity can be both an advantage and a limitation. Audiences who have seen many dance competitions will recognize the broad contours of the story. The college setting, the contest and the need for a decisive performance are established ingredients. The question is not whether the film reinvents those elements, but whether it combines them with enough personality and momentum to make the journey enjoyable. The review’s framing suggests that the answer is favorable, particularly for viewers already receptive to this kind of exuberant entertainment.

There is also a useful distinction between predictability and dullness. A story can be predictable while remaining satisfying if it builds anticipation effectively and delivers the emotional moments with conviction. Dance movies often thrive on that relationship with expectation. Viewers may know that a major performance is coming, but the enjoyment lies in seeing how the performers reach it and what the moment means when it arrives.

That is why “Best of the Best” may be especially well suited to a group watch. Its qualities are easy to share and discuss. Friends can respond to the performances, debate the rivalries and enjoy the jokes without needing the film to provide a complicated explanation of its appeal. The movie’s pleasures are immediate, which makes it a natural choice for an evening when the goal is entertainment rather than homework.

Netflix’s release does, however, place some responsibility on the viewer. To get the most from a film designed like this, it may help to resist treating it as background content. The choreography and comic timing need attention, and the emotional stakes depend on recognizing how the characters respond to one another. Watching with other people can restore some of the atmosphere the film seems to invite, even if the viewing remains at home.

Ultimately, “Best of the Best” sounds less like a reinvention of the dance movie than a confident celebration of its most accessible pleasures. Lena Khan’s film brings together college comedy, Bollywood performance and the competitive structure associated with modern dance pictures. Its most persuasive argument is not that the formula has changed, but that the formula can still work when a movie commits to it fully.

For viewers who loved “Step Up 2: The Streets,” the recommendation is straightforward: this is the kind of follow-up experience that offers familiar excitement in a different cultural and comedic register. For everyone else, the film presents itself as an energetic Netflix option with a simple promise—watch young performers chase a win, let the music take over and enjoy the ride. The one complication is that the movie may be best experienced with exactly what its streaming home cannot guarantee: a crowd ready to cheer.