Cha Cha Real Smooth Is an Enjoyable but Unremarkable Nice Guy’s Tale
This review originally ran as part of Paste’s Sundance 2022 coverage.
Every once in a while you meet someone who’s truly just some guy, with no discernibly extraordinary qualities, for whom things seem to work out based on charisma alone. In writer-director-star Cooper Raiff’s friendly sophomore feature Cha Cha Real Smooth, that guy happens to be Andrew (Raiff), a charming and disarming recent Tulane graduate whose sole motivation is to make enough money to join his Fulbright scholar girlfriend in Barcelona. Unfortunately, the only job he can grab is as a minimum wage cashier at an unforgivingly named food court stand in his hometown (Meat Sticks for the Miscellaneous Sundance Audience Award!) while he crashes in his little brother’s room, fights with his pragmatist stepdad (Brad Garrett), and attempts to convince his mom (Leslie Mann) that she has the wrong taste in men and he has the right taste in women.
Into this meandering existence stumble the opportunities of his lifetime thus far. While escorting his brother, David (the cute-as-a-button Evan Assante), to a bar mitzvah bash, Andrew takes it upon himself to spice up the floundering dance floor, and to make friends with the resident rumored bad mom, Domino (Dakota Johnson), and her autistic daughter, Lola (natural newcomer Vanessa Burghardt). He succeeds wildly at both, getting hired by a mob of Jewish moms as a party starter for their childrens’ b’nai mitzvot, and securing Domino’s affection in the process. In this indie, as with many before it, nothing is more attractive to a hot mom than a goofy, unfiltered young man-child who treats her own child like royalty. Also in this indie, as with many before it, Judaism is used as a backdrop and as texture, but isn’t engaged with on any level beyond its visual symbolism. (At one point, both Andrew and Domino bemoan that they’re not Jewish.)
The flirtationship Domino and Andrew fall into is by all means a terrible idea, but the film has to work against its casting to convince us of that. Andrew feels too self-assured and Domino too acceptably within Andrew’s age range to be all that illicit. However, though Domino is devoted to her daughter and to the stability that her often absent fiancé Joseph (a gruff Raúl Castillo) provides, she’s attracted to Andrew’s youth and possibility—the kind she lost at an early age when keeping an entire other person alive became her number one priority. Domino is frightened of the certainty she craves, and Andrew hasn’t yet learned to value the sacrifices others make for loved ones. It’s a perfectly ill-advised match, with the most unbelievable choice being made on the understanding that Andrew is a genuinely good guy and wouldn’t sleep with Domino even if she straddled him and kissed him, no sirree.