Cha Cha Real Smooth
2022
**½
Director: Cooper Raiff
Cast: Cooper Raiff, Dakota Johnson, Raúl Castillo, Odeya Rush, Evan Assante, Vanessa Burghardt, Brad Garrett, Leslie Mann, Colton Osorio, Amara Pedroso Saquel
22-year-old Andrew returns home and takes a part-time job as a party-starter at bar and bat mitzvahs, where he forms a complicated bond with an older woman and her autistic teenage daughter. Cooper Raiff's second feature is a sympathetic yet pretentious romantic comedy about the aimlessness of post-college life. Raiff, a rather charmless performer with his perpetual grin, has somewhat self-indulgently written himself the leading role as the nicest guy in the world who proves irresistible to an older woman who is already in a seemingly happy relationship. The story offers little genuine drama or insight, though it does deliver four or five endings. The film's title, taken from the lyrics of "Cha Cha Slide", is terrible.
