Travis Leamons // Film Critic
Rated R, 107 minutes.
Director: Cooper Raiff
Cast: Cooper Raiff, Dakota Johnson, Vanessa Burghardt, Evan Assante, Leslie Mann, Brad Garrett, and Raul Castillo
I’m convinced Apple sells iPhones that cost more than a month’s rent so it can play cinema roulette every January in Park City, Utah. For the past two years, the tech giant outbid some of the major Hollywood distributors at Sundance in acquiring films for Apple TV+. Then, last year, it acquired CODA, which went on to win the Oscar for best picture – something rival Netflix has failed to do despite having five nominees since 2019.
This year, it picked up Audience Award winner CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH. The question isn’t whether or not it’s worth the $15 million deal (short answer: it is), but will it give writer-director-star Cooper Raiff the kind of push young filmmakers crave?
God, I hope so.
In 2020, the Dallas native nailed the feeling of freedom and abandonment of college life with his debut S#!%HOUSE. For his follow-up, he plays a college graduate still trying to come of age.
He may only be 25, but Raiff has a writer’s gift when it comes to realism and how people talk. Set up a camera in a kitchen with two actors conversing while sucking on ice pops, with pregnant pauses giving way to deflating characters’ expressions, and it stings with an overriding tonality.
Raiff stars as Andrew, a 23-year-old Tulane graduate still living at home with his bipolar mother (Leslie Mann), step-dad (Brad Garrett), and little brother. Feelings of ambition and adulthood are an uneven keel, with Andrew heading nowhere. During the day, he sells people meat on a stick at Meat Sticks, a fast-food job that’s as corny as it sounds – and a perfect name for such a generic food court eatery. The skewers the Meat Sticks clientele grasp might as well be a metaphor for how Andrew approaches love, only feel the piercing wooden stab of heartache.
Quick to give his heart and quicker to have it broken, Andrew has always been unafraid to put himself out there. Such charm and uninhibitedness at being the life of the party, he soon discovers he can make others follow his lead when he escorts his brother David (Evan Assante) to a dance party where nobody wants to dance let alone stand. Once he gets people off their duffs and on the dance floor, Jewish moms are more than willing to pay Andrew to get the party started.
Cha cha now, y’all, as the song goes.
When Andrew sees Domino (Dakota Johnson giving a tender performance as a single mom to a teenage daughter, which seems as complicated to fathom as it is to write) attend a dance, you start formulating an idea of where the story is headed. Befriend the daughter to get closer to the mother, perhaps? That does happen, but not in a cliched, rom-com kind of way. Raiff isn’t that corny; his character armor is earnest, even if some of his words are complete bull.
Most guys would be turned off by a mom with a kid. Total red flag. The second red flag would be discovering the kid is a teen with autism. Where most men would pull the fire alarm and run to the nearest exit, Andrew stays put and is willing to engage in conversation with Domino’s daughter Lola (a wonderful Vanessa Burghardt). Taking a further step is not being weirded out when asked to be her babysitter so Domino and her more age-appropriate lawyer fiancé (Raul Castillo) can go out on dates. Andrew’s friendship with Lola gets him closer to Domino. CHA CHA’s prologue establishes the idea Andrew longs for older women. Him crushing on a party hostess and confessing his love when he’s just a little kid proves as much. She rebuffs him and it breaks his boyish heart. Age difference, financial instability, and masking insecurity are a few reasons why Andrew and Domino can’t work. But these relationship roadblocks don’t stop Andrew from giving it the old college try.
The conversations they have, particularly one about depression, are moments of aching truth and why some may come away from CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH like Humpty Dumpty after taking a nasty fall.
A little broken.
I sure did.
Grade: A
