‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ Review: A Quintessential Dude With Attitude and Crush on Older Woman Sundance Film. That’s a Good and Not So Good Thing

He’s a cha cha actual clean talker. He’s 22, tall and good-looking with a beard, however not a scruffy hipster beard — extra like a post-millennial, post-ironic conventional beard, which units off options which might be finely chiseled in a Center American company approach. (When he grins, he seems to be like Donny Osmond.) He’s simply out of faculty however has no concept what he needs to do. He’s a Zoomer spinning his wheels, a part of a practice of aimless insurgent slackers that stretches again to “The Graduate.” He’s honest however a bit smarmy, a “good man” who is aware of tips on how to use his sincerity. (He says stuff like, “I really feel there are issues that you simply simply, like, don’t say to me. And I can’t inform whether or not you’re, like, holding again a want to be shut, or a want to be distant.”) He’s, in fact, good with the women, perhaps a little bit too good, which is why he attracts the amorous attentions of a mom he meets at a bat mitzvah, performed by Dakota Johnson. And he’s received issues, however they’re type of white folks issues. You would name them old-school indie-film issues.

Andrew, the hero of “Cha Cha Actual Easy” (he’s performed by Cooper Raiff, who wrote and directed the film), is a charmingly annoying, egocentric at coronary heart however meticulously other-directed, oh so acquainted Sundance Movie Competition character. The movie opens with a prelude that flashes again to when Andrew was a boy of 12, with a crush on a grown girl he’s audacious sufficient to declare his like to. This, it appears, will likely be his “sample,” although all I may suppose was, “It’s ‘Tadpole’ redux.” Luckily, “Cha Cha Actual Easy” is a significantly better film than “Tadpole.” Raiff, who arrived on the scene with the award-winning 2020 coming-of-age comedy “Shithouse” (which he additionally wrote, directed, and starred in), has the instincts of a born filmmaker: tips on how to form a scene, tips on how to deliver out his actors, tips on how to create a hero who’s simply fascinating sufficient to hook us and simply off sufficient to make us wish to appropriate him.

Andrew is confused about all the pieces — work, love, you title it. Regardless of that, he’s received the type of cocksure persona that claims Irresistible Indie Movie Hero. And the push-pull dance he does with the viewers (“Look, I’m charming! Look, I’ve additionally received points!”) is kind of the identical dance that the movie is doing. “Cha Cha Actual Easy” works extra time to be an sincere film, and it additionally works extra time to ingratiate itself. In a way, it accomplishes each goals, however I’m unsure that they completely go collectively.

The world of impartial movie is in transition. The as soon as sturdy outdated dream — you make a film, it will get into Sundance, it turns folks on, it attracts a distributor, it’s launched into theaters and connects with audiences — can nonetheless occur, however as a mannequin for a way the indie-film world takes care of the streaming revolution, it’s quite a bit much less strong than it as soon as was. The explanation I deliver this up is that “Cha Cha Actual Easy,” which is more likely to emerge as one of many uncommon “crowd-pleasers” of Sundance 2022, is the quintessence of a sure type of Sundance movie that’s rooted in an period that’s going out of fashion. There’s each probability this film will observe the sample of the dream. Besides, maybe, for one half: Greater than ever, I ponder who the viewers is.

I loved most of “Cha Cha Actual Easy,” whilst I used to be conscious that a lot of what occurs in it seems like a collection of tropes descended from “Rushmore” and “Say Something” and “Igby Goes Down” and 100 Sundance movies like “The Tao of Steve” which might be centered on lovably exasperating man-child flakes. There’s the truth that Andrew has a job from hell manning the counter of a fast-food mall restaurant referred to as Meat Sticks. There’s the tranquil suburban setting and emo soundtrack. There’s the best way Andrew, tagging alongside together with his moppet-haired child brother (Evan Assante) to a bat mitzvah, winds up bringing the stodgy social gathering to life, which is why the native Jewish moms all agree to begin hiring him as a “social gathering starter.” (He does effectively at it, till he will get drunk and messes up.) There’s the mildly autistic woman he meets at that bat mitzvah, Lola (Vanessa Burghardt), and earlier than you realize it he’s develop into her buddy, protector, and babysitter. There’s Lola’s mother, Domino, performed by Johnson in a efficiency lodged someplace between trauma and come-on, who’s drawn to Andrew not as a result of she has a factor for seducing youthful males, however as a result of she’s lonely, he’s a saint to her daughter, and their personalities click on.

Within the outdated indie-film days, Andrew and Domino, as inappropriate as their hooking up can be, would have attached. However you’ll be able to really feel the tremor of up to date warning at work in “Cha Cha Actual Easy,” a film about an outré affair that by no means fairly turns into an affair, the identical approach that you would be able to really feel it in “Licorice Pizza.” These motion pictures wish to tweak our proprieties and behave on the similar time. And it implies that “Cha Cha Actual Easy” is much less a comedy about an erotic-emotional ceremony of passage than it’s a “character research” a few child too good for his personal good who’s received to be taught to develop up. All of it provides up, and is even type of touching (particularly when Andrew informs his brother that it’s time for them to cease sharing a room).

However should you marvel why I maintain carping a few film that’s not unhealthy and was made with real expertise, it’s that it left me with truthfully divided emotions. “Cha Cha Actual Easy” is okay so far as it goes, and a number of the performing is best than that. I particularly favored Dakota Johnson, who’s exhibiting new depths from behind her sun-dazed smile, and Raúl Castillo as her sternly territorial fiancé. However the film, for all its good qualities, by no means explodes into ardour or revelation the best way that, say, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” did. Cooper Raiff is a talented actor, however Andrew, as a hero, walks round overly happy with himself, and that is one case the place it’s exhausting to unlink the character’s self-regard from the filmmaker’s. “Cha Cha Actual Easy” could flip right into a Sundance hit, however perhaps no film ought to appear this designed to be one.