Cha Cha Real Smooth: Yet Another Movie About A Listless 20-Something

Even if someone has not seen Cha Cha Real Smooth before, there is a solid chance that they will be familiar with the conceit of the movie. The narrative about the person in their early to mid-20s who does not know what to do with their life as they struggle through their new reality. Typically a movie like this will feature these characters working jobs they hate or other odd jobs that are not in the field they always wanted to be in which causes a depression spiral. They will also often focus on a male lead that utilizes a relationship with a female character to help them move through these moments in their life, often through a romantic relationship, to help the protagonist process what is happening in his life. Cha Cha Real Smooth does all of this and hopes to bank on the charm of writer/director/lead actor Cooper Raiff and does so with some success.

The general plot of Cha Cha Real Smooth follows Andrew (Cooper Raiff) as he moves back home after college and ends up getting a job motivating partygoers to dance at Bar Mitzvahs. While doing this job, he meets Domino (Dakota Johnson) who is the mother of a young girl with autism and immediately falls in love with her. The story follows their relationship as Andrew tries to find a job with a non-profit, juggle his long-distance relationship with his college girlfriend, and deal with the messy relationship between Domino and her fiancé.

Ultimately a viewer’s enjoyment of the movie will be contingent on how much they enjoy Raiff’s portrayal of Andrew and how charming they find him to be. If one watches the movie and does not find his mannerisms and behavior to be endearing, they almost certainly not enjoy the movie. The naivete that Andrew shows is indicative of Raiff’s lack of experience and possible lack of motivation to consult with another person during the writing process. It is a little like when a musician or actor or other public figure has a biopic made about them and people who have a vested interest in the universally positive portrayal of the subject are writing, directing, and/or producing said biopic. In these cases, the story ends up sanitized to the point that it loses bite.

This is where Cha Cha Real Smooth truly fails. In other movies like this, and there are a lot over the last 40 years, there needs to be a level of vulnerability for the protagonist in order for the movie to work properly. Frances Ha has the creeping and continued depression that Frances feels as she is seemingly left behind as her friends move on to bigger and better things. Slacker is unapologetic in its portrayal of people from so many different walks of life while making them all feel human and not like a cardboard cutout. Clerks shows an emotional insecurity in Dante that radiates through the entire movie and influences everything about Dante’s actions. There is nothing like that in Cha Cha Real Smooth which just makes the viewer wonder why they are watching. Compound this with the fact that the above movies, and the entire subgenre of “mumblecore” as a whole, can do stories better than Cha Cha Real Smooth can with a fraction of the budget, which is reported at $15 million, and actors that don’t have the pedigree of Dakota Johnson, Brad Garrett, and Leslie Mann.

If one wants to watch a movie with this subject matter, they should watch one of the above-mentioned movies instead of Cha Cha Real Smooth. In a world where there are so many streaming platforms out there, and therefore an overabundance of content, it is hard to justify watching another movie where the entire conceit is “what if a guy got home from college and did not know what to do with his life” when there are dozens of movies that have covered that exact story in the last decade alone and did it better without the money behind it. This will make a great calling card for Raiff going forward and maybe his next movie will be better but this one is just meandering without any meaningful statements about any of the topics it brushes on.

Final Rating 4/10