‘I can’t tell whether you’re holding back a desire to be close or a desire to be distant…’
If you don’t know Cooper Raiff, he’s like a goofier version of Jake Johnson. A silly Adam Scott, if you will. Cha Cha Real Smooth is his second feature film (following his debut movie Shithouse) and it sees Raiff marking himself out as a triple threat – writer, director and actor…
Andrew (Raiff) has just graduated from college and is drifting through life following his girlfriend leaving him for the bright lights of Barcelona. After wandering into a job as a kind of hype man for Bar Mitzvahs, Andrew meets Domino (Dakota Johnson), an engaged older woman with an adolescent teenage daughter named Lola (Vanessa Burghardt) who is autistic. Inevitably, Andrew falls for Domino and becomes a surrogate father to Lola as her real father abandoned her and her soon-to-be stepfather often works away for long spells.
I haven’t seen Shithouse (although I will be watching it now) but Cha Cha Real Smooth ensures that Raiff’s next picture (entitled The Trashers) will be highly anticipated. As with Raiff himself, it seems impossible not to love this picture. The roguish charm of the protagonist is reflected in the tone of the film and just like Domino is always trying not to show that she is laughing at Andrew’s dumb jokes, we, the audience, eventually succumb to his considerable charm. Aside from the two leads, Leslie Mann is wonderful as always as Andrew’s unhinged but well-meaning mother and Burghardt, who is autistic in real life, also provides a performance full of warmth and humanity – no easy task for a character who takes everything literally.
I really loved Cha Cha Real Smooth—more than I expected, too. It earns its sentimentality. It’s funny, wistful, and nostalgic, and it has a great soundtrack. For a short time, it pulled off that magic trick that only cinema or a really good book is able to do—it made me forget everything else in my life for 107 minutes to transport me somewhere new entirely—a massively underrated and underseen movie.
