I think it’s fair to say the last great, beautiful light in Hollywood died when they stopped making the “Step Up” movies. They were simple films full of simple joys, in which any problem could be solved by popping and/or locking, sometimes with lasers. Are you and your lover from different sides of the tracks? Dance will fix that. Is your millionaire hotel-tycoon father gentrifying Florida? Dance will fix that. If the “Step Up” movies had kept going, undeterred, they probably would have stopped global warming by now.
There’s a great, big “Step Up”-sized hole in our hearts, but fortunately, there’s a new film that solves the problem. All it took was great dancing (obviously), an ensemble of winsome characters and sharp storytelling. It’s called “Best of the Best,” and the title is only slightly hyperbolic.
Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (“Never Have I Ever”) and Priyanka Kedia (“Disclosure Day”) star as Maya and Anjali, two fantastic dancers whose high school talent show concluded — as they always do if they’re at the beginning of the movie, instead of the end — in public humiliation. Now they’re at UCLA and determined to buckle down and put the past behind them. Which lasts about one day, since UCLA has a Bollywood dance club filled with kooky but spectacularly talented students.
Maya is a free-thinking rebel who can’t take direction, while Anjali barely squeaked her way into college and can’t afford to get distracted. But they love dancing, and the club’s president, Ronak (Ankur Rathee), is a superhunk. So they get swept into the world of competitive dancing, inspired by classic Bollywood cinema, but also sometimes the ascent of Mount Everest, American line-dancing and museum heists. They’re not allowed to just be great dancers. They also have to tell a great story.
Over the course of “Best of the Best,” Maya and Anjali grow apart, accidentally betray each other, fall for different guys and grow as people. Nothing about the story is complicated, but everything about it works. The screenplay by Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam is perfectly structured and makes ample room for every cast member to make their mark, say something funny and come together as a team.
Minhaj also co-stars as Hamza, the only professor who works at UCLA. More of the plot revolves around actual college stuff than a typical college movie, which makes “Best of the Best” more believable than most. But setting the action at UCLA — with a rival dance troupe from USC, UCLA’s longstanding rival — doesn’t affect much. Even the details are off. The crowds chant “UCLA! UCLA!” over and over, but the actual, official UCLA fight song, which any graduate will tell you gets drilled into your head under penalty of death on the first day of orientation and will be heard more incessantly than the sound of your own intrusive thoughts, is conspicuously absent. I assume the budget wasn’t big enough to get the rights from the Bill Conti estate, but I digress.
Nitpicks aside, and boy, did I just pick the world’s tiniest nit, “Best of the Best” is an exceptional production. Lena Khan (“Flora & Ulysses”) knows exactly how to direct a dance movie, with crisp, clear, cleverly choreographed set pieces and the occasional bravura camera move. The pacing is top-notch, grabbing our attention early and never letting go. It’s the kind of movie that doesn’t win awards but probably should. A film this funny and involving will keep you alert and invested even if you’re dangerously sleep-deprived, which I wouldn’t know anything about, no sir, not me.
The entire ensemble is fantastic, even if most of the actors are playing whimsical archetypes. It’s Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia who carry this film on their shoulders, and they never let it drop, even when they’re precariously perched on the set dressing and dancing their hearts out. There’s a recurring joke that Maya doesn’t have any star power, which is the hardest part of this film to believe, since Maitreyi Ramakrishnan has the kind of star power most actors only dream about, including the stars.
I began this review by talking about the “Step Up” movies, and I’m going to end the same way, because the similarities appear intentional. The climactic dance is even forced to take place in darkness, illuminated by portable lights the performers carry around, just like “Step Up 2 The Streets” (but not as damp). The film even comes with its own Moose, this one played by the lovable Nihar Duvvuri, who looks like a comic-relief sidekick but gets one of the film’s best and most satisfying speeches.
“Here’s the truth,” Ronak tells his team of misfits. “AI is here, your degree is worthless and you’ll never own a home.” I wish he was wrong, but he’s probably right. Multiple generations have been screwed over, have bleak fiscal futures and will have to constantly rebel against one of the most soul-crushing, anti-artistic technologies ever devised just to survive. But it’s an oddly inspirational speech, because what “Best of the Best” is saying is that we have to appreciate the here and now. We need to make our lives unforgettable, celebrate our friendships and dance our hearts out on our own terms. That’s what being the “Best of the Best” is about, in more ways than one.
The post ‘Best of the Best’ Review: If You Loved ‘Step Up 2: The Streets,’ This Is the Next Best Thing appeared first on TheWrap.
