Review: Cooper Raiff’s Ineffable Charm Prevails in ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’
One of the bigger splashes out of this year’s Sundance was Cooper Raiff’s Cha Cha Real Smooth. After making waves at SXSW 2020 with his debut film Shit House, Raiff’s follow up was able to draw the eyes of big players, namely Apple, who acquired the film’s distribution rights for a whopping $15 million. Acquisitions of that size make trade headlines, and while the price the paid and film’s quality are not directly correlated, it does produce some curiosity as to why Apple wrote such a large check. The answer to which, after seeing it, appears to be for a very contemporary, American indie rendition of The Graduate.
After graduating college, Andrew, played by Raiff himself, finds few career prospects waiting for him. His degree in communications lands him a job at the local food court where he endlessly scrolls through his phone waiting for his long distance girlfriend to respond to his pining messages. No living wage means crashing on the floor of his brother’s bedroom under the roof of his mom and step-dad, the later of whom he does not like or respect. Worse yet, Andrew doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. Like many post-grad adults, he wades through a rudderless existence that fails to meet the expectations he and others have set for him. Benjamin Braddock, he is indeed.
Fortunes turn for the better when fraternal duties lead him to chaperoning a never ending rotation of New Jersey bar and bat mitzvahs. The awkward social interactions of teens at parties is well suited for Andrew, whose ineffable charisma helps spur social interaction among the youth. He earns the title of “party starter,” and not long after, every affluent mom in the area hires him to host their events.
At these parties the social circles remain the same, which leads Andrew to meeting a young mother named Domino (Dakota Johnson). Domino attends these gatherings with her autistic daughter Lola (Vanessa Burghardt), who struggles to befriend her classmates who invite her out of obligation. Domino and Lola sit at their table alone, solving Rubik’s cubes and listening to their own music, while everyone else socializes. When Andrew goes over to liven the mood, he ends up sparking a charming relationship with Lola that Domino notices and admires. Their continued interactions at bar and bat mitzvahs leads to a semi-intimate relationship between Domino and Andrew who both share their plighted pasts and personal failings that pervade there current realities.
The stripped-down narrative of Cha Cha Real Smooth is similar to that of Mike Nichols’ 1967 drama. A directionless college grad starts a fleeting relationship with a older woman — both parties partaking in this affair as an emotional outlet for their troubles. Similar to that of her character in The Lost Daughter, Johnson’s Domino plays a mid-thirties mother who lives with a regretful past. She suffers from abandonment brought on by her original husband who left both her and Lola in an act of selfish cruelty. The following years leaves Domino in a depressed search for something stable that might provide structure and fulfillment in her life. For Andrew, a person who lacks any of those things as a twenty-two year old, he believes he can assume that role while simultaneously creating some sense of direction in his own life.
Raiff makes his intentions clear in no uncertain terms. By the time the film nears its conclusion, Domino spells out the film’s lessons directly to Andrew in an act of rejection. Though Cha Cha Real Smooth shows improvement as a sophomore feature, it largely follows in the footsteps of the American indie films that came before it by telegraphing its emotions plainly and with an abundance of sentimentality. As a movie, it comes to be rigorously defined by its message more than its direction, which comes across as easy, digestible, and lofty.
The film finds itself toeing the line between endearing and misguided, but thanks in large part to Cooper Raiff’s performance, the film errs on the side of the former more so than the later. Raiff truthfully steals the show; where it might be easy to make Andrew this dejected twenty-something wallowing in his own emotions, Raiff earns the film a lot of slack by making his character an incredibly likable, quick witted charmer. At certain points you just go with the middling plot because Cooper is wining you over. Credit where credit is due, he carries this film, and when taken into consideration the feel-good, crowd pleasing nature of its plot, you start to realize why Apple would pay so much for it. After all, that same game plan won them a best picture Oscars this year.
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