Lacking direction in life, recent college grad Andrew (Cooper Raiff) is back living at home with his mother (Leslie Mann), stepfather (Brad Garrett) and stepbrother David (Evan Assante). His girlfriend has left him to study in Barcelona, so he spends his time working at a mall restaurant and taking David to his classmates’ bar and bat mitzvahs. At one of these events, Andrew meets Domino (Dakota Johnson), the resident rumored young bad mom, and her autistic daughter, Lola (Vanessa Burghardt). Andrew immediately develops a crush on Domino, and he manages to get into her good graces by helping her and Lola get through the night.
Raiff plays Andrew with an impossible amount of charm – so much so that he’s appointed by several of the mothers to be the “party starter” at upcoming events. He is effortlessly good with kids even when he works at their parties drunk. This is where the problems start for Raiff, who also is the screenwriter and director of the film. Although he gives Andrew tangible flaws, Raiff doesn’t address any of them with much scrutiny. His pursuit of Domino despite her engagement to her fiancé, Joseph (Raúl Castillo), is seen in a positive light rather than crossing a line, and outside of a few understandable acts of frustration, Andrew is presented as a perfectly nice guy with only the best of intentions for everyone around him. This lack of depth severely limits Andrew as a protagonist and deprives him of any room for real growth. As a result, his realization at the film’s end remains largely unearned.
Andrew acts as a kind of savior for Domino and Lola since Joseph is constantly away working in Chicago. As Andrew and Domino grow closer, she even tells him that he looks like the “sweetest person ever.” It’s evident that viewers are supposed to fall for Andrew and his unwavering optimism, but Raiff’s writing prevents this from being deserved. Instead, the more fascinating character comes from Johnson, who gives a wonderfully subdued performance as a woman who has lost much of the freedom of her 20s to young motherhood. Although the film doesn’t delve much into the inner life of Domino, Johnson is able to keep her typical dream girl character type interesting. In this sense, Domino serves as the beating heart of the film and is the source of much of the film’s emotional payoff. However, it’s unfortunate that the film doesn’t fully recognize this and mostly focuses on how these events affect Andrew.
Cha Cha Real Smooth hinges on this central connection as Andrew’s relationships with the rest of the characters feel underdeveloped, especially with his mother. The film initially introduces her as someone who will undergo a change with her bipolar disorder alienating her from the rest of the parents. However, this plotline is dropped midway through with no resolution. In fact, through the film’s entire runtime, none of the characters know what Andrew is going through in relation to Domino, making them feel inconsequential to Andrew’s life and the film as a whole.
Although Raiff attempts to add particular story beats that are missing from most coming-of-age films, they mostly struggle to land and thus culminate into a middling film that does not do enough to differentiate itself from most Sundance indies. It feels as if Raiff tried to cram too many lessons for Andrew to learn into the runtime. Films in a similar mold to Cha Cha Real Smooth would greatly benefit from thoughtful reflection of their protagonists’ opportunities to grow and the disillusionment that exists through that process. However, there is potential here as Raiff realizes the value of relationships over the solo journey of finding oneself when growing out of one’s early 20s. The overall vision may be messy but that’s what this chapter of life is mostly like.
Photo courtesy of Apple TV+
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