The first feature film from writer-director-actor Cooper Raiff, “S—house,” premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in 2020, the effort winning the Grand Jury Prize for best narrative feature. In it, he portrays Alex, a college freshman navigating the challenges of that time in a person’s life.
His follow-up effort, “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” took home the Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. In it, he portrays Andrew, a young man fresh out of college, who’s moved into his younger brother’s room in the home of his mother’s boyfriend, as he has yet to land a job that will allow him to support himself.
Landing this week on Apple TV+, “Cha Cha Real Smooth” is an unusual coming-of-age film, one that rather successfully — if also bittersweetly — captures what can be a confusing period in a man’s life. In many ways, you still feel like a kid, but you’re also yearning to add some adult element to your existence.
Raiff’s Andrew thinks he’s perhaps found that in young mother Domino (Dakota Johnson) and her middle-school-age autistic daughter, Lola (Vanessa Burghardt).
But let’s come back to them in a bit.
You should know Andrew is a romantic. We learn this in the film’s opening moments, set 10 years earlier at what appears to be a bar mitzvah, in which the then boy becomes smitten with a girl leading the group dances, a blonde with several years on him.
“I know she’s old,” he tells his mother (Leslie Mann), “but I think she’s in love with me, too.”
“Are we sure, babe?” Mom asks, trying to be supportive but full of appropriate doubt.
The young woman lets Andrew down kindly, but he’s devastated all the same.
Years later, while living at the home of Mom’s boyfriend, Greg (Brad Garrett), and in the room of young David (Evan Assante), Andrew is working at a mall fast-food counter as he looks for something more meaningful. To make matters worse, his college girlfriend has gone off to Barcelona on a Fulbright scholarship.
Andrew accompanies David to a friend’s bar mitzvah and becomes the life of the party, coaxing folks on to the dance floor — including Lola, who never normally would do such a thing, preferring to sit with her mother while playing with a magic cube. Her mother is shocked.
Andrew so impresses some of the other mothers in attendance that they hire him to be a party starter at their upcoming bar and bat mitzvahs. At one, Andrew helps Domino out of a very uncomfortable situation, further endearing him to the woman who, since becoming pregnant at an early age, has devoted most of her energy to caring for Lola.
Andrew takes a genuine interest in Lola and volunteers to watch her whenever Domino needs a night out. However, well, we can see where all of this probably is going, his obvious feelings for Domino the main driver of his actions.
A tad predictable? Maybe. But it’s a satisfying journey all the same — and one with one major complication lurking.
As a writer and director, Raiff has a real gift for character moments. “Cha Cha Real Smooth” is a film that both gets under your skin — a few scenes involving Andrew and Domino are entrancing despite little actually happening — and regularly causes you to smirk, if not quite laugh out loud.
“Greg,” an annoyed Andrew tells him at one point, “I feel like your purpose on this earth is to make things weird.”
On the other hand, scenes peppered throughout the film in which Andrew gives David advice on how to go about getting his first kiss don’t add as much as you’d hope to the overall dish.
Still, Raiff is charming and vulnerable as Andrew, a character we alternately root for, sympathize with and question mightily. That said, there are moments at which writer-director Raiff asks a bit too much of actor Raiff. We could be wrong, but our guess is his future lies more behind the camera than in front of it.
Johnson, meanwhile, is both a key on-screen player — not the world’s greatest performance, she’s well-suited for the kind, bewitching and also, perhaps, somewhat-meek Domino — as well as a key behind-the-scenes figure. “Cha Cha Real Smooth” is the first release from TeaTime Pictures, a production company she co-founded.
Like many indies, “Smooth” can feel a little coarse in spots, but that’s also part of its charm.
Most importantly, it pulls you into these characters’ lives and keeps you invested in them through an ending that feels right.
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‘CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH’
3 stars (out of 4)
MPAA rating: R (for language and some sexual content)
Running time: 1:49
How to watch: On Apple TV+ Friday
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