Mark Reviews Movies: CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH

Cha Cha Real Smooth, Apple TV+

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 16, 2022

On the surface, Cha Cha Real Smooth is a pleasant enough story, about a young man who just got out of college, doesn't know what to do with his life, and interacts with a bunch of people who lead him to realize that nobody really knows what to do with life. Cooper Raiff, who wrote and directed the movie, plays the young man in question with a sort of impossibly charming (as in it's a kind of a shock just how many people genuinely and deeply like him upon a first meeting), selflessly kind (despite allegedly being so caught up in his own problems that he can't get his act together), and wholly empathetic nature that doesn't quite feel real. Like the whole of the movie, Raiff's Andrew comes across as far too calculated to seem genuine.

He is, though—or, at least, that's how the movie treats him, his various personal and professional issues, and his connections to everyone around him. For a movie that's supposedly about how much of a mess Andrew is, he seems to have it pretty together, save for some excessive drinking and his unfortunate tendency to fall in love with women and establish specific, life-defining expectations around them.

A prologue here shows a young Andrew (played by Javien Mercado) at 12 years old falling for an older, albeit still young, woman (played by Kelly O'Sullivan) at a party, where she's working as a party-starter. At the end of the night, young Andrew asks her out on a date and ends up heartbroken. After confessing that she "has never been more flattered" in her life, the woman rightly says she's too old for him.

It's easy to buy young Andrew's naïve enthusiasm for a pretty woman. Once an older Andrew becomes caught up in his feelings toward another woman with a bit more life and a lot more experience behind her, that line from the party-starter about never feeling more flattered doesn't just feel clunky anymore. It's more like a sort of reverse self-promotion, in that here's a character going out of her way to make sure we know how charming, kind, and thoughtful Andrew instantly is to anyone who meets him.

As an actor, Raiff certainly can be all of those things, and to an extent, he is here, too. It just seems a bit disingenuous that this movie, which touches upon the stories and feelings of so many other characters, revolves around making sure we know that about this character—even if it's at the expense of treating those other characters as more than just ways to elevate Andrew.

The story follows Andrew returning home after college, living with his unnamed—an odd oversight, to be sure—mother (played by Leslie Mann), his stepfather Greg (Brad Garrett), and younger brother David (Evan Assante). While he wants to work at a non-profit organization to do some good with his career, Andrew ends up at a local corn dog stand in the mall.

Thankfully, he's also good at starting a party and keeping it going (Is this intended to show the influence of that woman from the prologue and stretch that scene's attempted significance even further?). His skills in getting people to have fun at a bat mitzvah party gets him steady work doing the same for other parties.

Mostly, though, the story is about Andrew's relationship with Domino (Dakota Johnson), one of the mothers in the social scene of David's school. Her daughter is Lola (Vanessa Burghardt), who has autism, and Andrew is, of course, presented as impeccably on-point in his interactions with her. After Andrew convinces Lola to dance at a party, Domino starts looking at him with deep esteem and desire, even though she's engaged to Joseph (Raúl Castillo), whose only non-confrontational line of dialogue is praise for Andrew.

He's an attorney who's conveniently out of town on business for most of the story, so that Domino can prove how attracted she is to Andrew, while Andrew can show off how attuned he is to Domino's feelings. The fact that these two characters are open and honest about these matters both is refreshing and strains credulity just a bit, especially since the focus ultimately reverts back to Andrew.

A lot more plays out on the sidelines: Andrew wanting to move to Barcelona, in order to maintain a relationship with his college girlfriend (played by Amara Pedroso Saquel), and his quick fling with previously out-of-reach high school classmate Macy (Odeya Rush). On the family front, we also get David asking his older brother for advice about kissing, the resentful relationship between Andrew and Greg (that resolves with a contrived fight at a party), and the mental health issues suffered by "Andrew's Mom" (which end up being another means of congratulating Andrew for being so relatively mature for his age).

There's an air of generosity in just how many characters are present and get some sort of development here, but it remains superficial. Cha Cha Real Smooth belongs entirely to Andrew, and the movie constantly attempts to verify why that—and only that—should be the case.

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