Netflix's new college comedy "Best of the Best" offers nothing audiences haven't seen before — and it hardly matters. The film, set among rival Bollywood dance groups on American campuses, delivers every familiar plot twist with such speed and energy that the formula feels freshly entertaining rather than recycled.

Lena Khan directs, one of the few Muslim female film-makers working in Hollywood. Her handling is, according to the Guardian's review, marked by "infectious energy." The script comes from Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam, a pair of millennial comedians the reviewer suggests "look as if they've done enough research on the inner workings of gen Z behaviour to write a PhD."

The premise is straightforward. Maya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and Anjali (Priyanka Kedia) are lifelong best friends who enrol together at UCLA. Maya is the clever, difficult one; Anjali is the nice, pretty one — though, as the review notes with a wink, Maya is also "a total babe." During freshers' week, the two join the college's Bollywood dance club.

Conflict arrives on schedule. Maya locks horns with the club's leader, Ronak (Ankur Rathee), over choreography. Ronak wants to build the new-season routine around Bollywood weddings, a choice Maya dismisses as "a bit trad." Her position is clear: to beat their rivals, the club needs something modern and fresh.

The Guardian's critic is candid about the film's predictability. "Each plot twist is instantly familiar, every character recognisable, the essential formula untweaked from a dozen previous college comedies," the review states. Yet the verdict is positive, because the execution compensates for the familiarity.

What engages the viewer, the review argues, is "not the familiar plot but the whip-fast telling and brilliant choreography." The film is funny and snappy. Khan's direction keeps the pace brisk enough that the audience rarely has time to dwell on where the story is inevitably heading.

The screenwriting pairing of Minhaj and Venkataramanujam deserves particular credit for the film's observational sharpness. Their dialogue and character work reflect a close study of contemporary campus culture, and that specificity grounds the film's more conventional beats in something recognisably lived-in.

For Ramakrishnan, the role offers another high-profile comic lead following her breakout television work, and she gives Maya a prickly charisma that keeps the character's contrarian streak likeable rather than grating. Kedia balances her as the warmer half of the friendship, and Rathee supplies the necessary friction as the traditionalist club leader.

"Best of the Best" ultimately succeeds by refusing to pretend it is anything other than what it is: a well-executed genre picture with a Bollywood dance twist. The film joins a growing slate of Netflix comedies targeting the South Asian diaspora audience, and its craft suggests Khan and her writers are talents worth tracking in the space.