Netflix's 'The Best of The Best' Delivers More Than Just Representation and Yes, You Should Watch It

When I first heard about Netflix's new release, The Best of The Best, I immediately knew I'd be tuning in as soon as the movie dropped. The movie is, after all, about a college Bollywood-fusion dance team, and as a South Asian American woman (who also grew up competing on Indian dance teams), I welcomed the type of representation that's so hard to come by.

It's a representation I never, ever had growing up. In Western media, nobody looked like me. In the Bollywood movies I watched with my family, even if the actors resembled me, their lived experiences didn't match what I was facing as a South Asian woman in the United States.

That's why The Best of the Best feels so important. It's not the only South Asian American representation we have, but it's quite possibly the first real coming of age movie about this experience (Bend Like Beckham was, for decades, the closest we had — and it was set in London rather than the US). What this movie does beautifully is touch on the intricacies of the South Asian American experience without veering too hard into stereotypes. It doesn't do this perfectly, as many are pointing out. But hot take: I think that's okay.

The movie is about two best friends, Maya and Anjali, who are (to some degree) forced into the smart friend/pretty friend dichotomy. At first, this felt a little bit frustrating to me. And as many people have pointed out, framing the stunning Maitreyi Ramakrishnan as the "undesirable friend" is wild, as is the idea that the other woman in the movie, who doesn't fit the standard of intellect South Asians are often held to is "dumb" (though, as a South Asian woman, I think there's a specific understanding of how you can be beautiful, confident, and intelligent, but if you don't fit this highly specific mold, you're not considered good enough).

While watching this particular dynamic play out, I had this sense of "ugh, we're doing this thing where we put women into binary boxes again?".

But then I had to ask myself: Would you have been this critical if this were a movie about people who have historically been represented in media? This trope is nothing new — yet when it comes to stories about marginalized, underrepresented groups, we're always shoving them under a microscope. But representation done imperfectly is better than no representation at all...and maybe playing into those old binaries is what makes this movie feel universal.

I'm going to say it: You don't need to have any familiarity with South Asian culture to enjoy this movie. It's about our experience, but it really frames the experience in such a way that people see the reality: South Asian Americans aren't some fringe group. We're people who have the same hopes, fears, goals, insecurities as anyone else. We're messy and imperfect, like everybody else. We struggle with identity and long to fit in, just like everybody else.

And in its imperfect glory, The Best of The Best delivers this.