Cha Cha Real Smooth – Movie Review
107 Minutes, Rated R
Written and Directed by Cooper Raiff
**NOTE: You can listen to us discuss Cha Cha Real Smooth in this episode, along with this week’s other big release, Lightyear.**
Synopsis:
A young man who works as a Bar Mitzvah party host strikes up a friendship with a mother and her autistic daughter.
Cha Cha Real smooth took Sundance by storm this year, winning the Audience Awardin its category.
But for a film with a title this smooth, it certainly is an uneven story.
I know, I know…the tile is from “The Cha Cha Slide,” a staple at celebratory gathering like the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs our lead character winds up running as a “Party Starter,” which is, apparently, an actual job.
I don’t do gatherings, so I was shocked by this revelation. But it’s real.
As a new college graduate, Andrew finds his way home, where his mother lives with his step-father and half-brother, working a crappy fast food job (Meat on a Stick) while trying to get to Barcelona to be with his college girlfriend.
Asked to take his brother to a friend’s Bar Mitzvah party, Andrew finds himself trying to amp up the party so his brother can dance with a girl he likes. In the process, he finds himself befriending a single mom, Domino, while coaxing her autistic daughter, Lola, onto the dance floor.
Weird, right?
He also reconnects with a girl from his time in high school, Macy.
There’s a lot of moving parts here:
- Andrew
- His family
- Domino and Lola
- Macy
- Various other jewish families who contract him as “party starter”
This is your classic Boy-pines-for-girl-who-isn’t-there, booty-calls-his-high-school-friend, falls-for-troubled-single-mom, reconnects-with-his-own-family, story.
Yeah, it’s messy.
Kind of like life.
Putting aside, for the moment, the rampant mother issues Andrew demonstrates throughout the film in his various dealings with women, and the absurdity of a 22-year-old being the object of affection for an engaged, late-thirty-something single mom, and you’re left with some pretty decent performances throughout.
Also, the film doesn’t shy away at all from the aforementioned messiness, and not just the relationship kind (there’s a scene in a bathroom stall that will drop jaws). In fact, it embraces them wholeheartedly, making them the center of attention in every scene.
It is the messiness of life which makes it interesting, which allows us all to figure life out–not just our own internal lives, but our external lives, the way in which we relate to other people.
Andrew is very slow about all this, of course. He doesn’t really know who he is, what he wants to do, or who he really wants to be with (if anyone), so he flails to pursue his college sweetheart, because it’s safe and comfortable.
Not that the people he surrounds himself with help at all. His mother is bi-polar and he doesn’t like his step-father. His brother is trying to figure out puberty and keeps asking him for advice (which he makes up on the spot). Domino sends unconflicted signals he can’t reconcile with his sense of right and wrong. And his college sweetheart is seeing someone else in Barcelona.
What is a boy to do? In Andrew’s case, when conflicted, booty-call Macy.
Like I said: a lot of moving parts… and messy.
By the time we get to the end, we can see the slow-motion trainwreck coming, but we can’t look away.
There’s no Hollywood ending here, which is the way it should be. To quote the philosopher Dante (Hicks): “Life is a series of down endings.”
But every down ending holds within it the promise of a brighter tomorrow.
Even for Andrew.
Cha Cha Real Smooth is available in a limited theatrical release and on Apple TV+ starting today, and stars Cooper Raiff, Dakota Johnson, Vanessa Burghardt, Evan Assante, Leslie Mann, and Brad Garrett.
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