Review by Cha Cha Real Smooth

You don’t need to be familiar with the American Bar Mitzvah party industry to know the moves of their “Cha Cha Slide” dance floor staple. You slide left, then right, interlace your feet and the rest goes from there. The same can be said for the film that refers to the lyrics of this song, Cha Cha Royal SweetThe second independent film by Cooper Raiff, a Sundance winner, which he also wrote and starred in. The Bats and the Bar Mitzvah often provide the setting for the film (think yarmulkes, pies, and throngs of goofy 12-year-olds hanging out making trap music), but basically the film is a character study. sailing man, Graduation-style, through post-academic life.

In many ways, the film shares the connective tissue with Raiff’s first feature film. First year (noble shit in the United States), a sometimes vividly honest account of shy student Alex (played by Raiff) groping through the social demands of college life. Like Alex, Raiff’s character here, Andrew, always expresses his feelings with finesse, contributing to some of the film’s cutest moments, most notably Dakota Johnson’s character Domino; his teenage daughter Lola (Vanessa Burghardt), who was unable to attend school due to her autism; and Andrew’s bipolar mother, played with seasoned maternal warmth by Leslie Mann.

Domino and Andrew connect through a series of long glances at the cloth-covered tables in the Bar Mitzvah of one of Lola’s classmates (Andrew joined his younger brother). Her relative youth and ability to dress beautifully have made Domino an outcast among other mothers in the community, but her bond with Lola and the need to give her as conventional a teenager as possible drives her regularly to these duties. Andrew’s ability to win over Lola, whose autism manifests itself in the need for strict rules and boundaries, marks the beginning of a complicated but well-meaning relationship with the two of them.

Johnson, an ever-enigmatic and seductive screen presence, teamed up with Raiff on his character, who suffers from depressive feelings, dragging Andrew further into his orbit. As a result, her dialogue sounds more nuanced and lived-in, like a woman ten years older than Andrew’s 22. Raiff, 25, infuses the script around him with unbridled seriousness. Each of his characters is understanding and redeemable, even when he makes bad decisions. It is a quality that sometimes dominates the film; Although rooted in a suburban community of people with real problems, Raiff’s palpable love for the characters he has created idealizes them to the point that they feel at odds with the world he has created for them.

However, it’s still an impressive observation film, and its unswerving lack of cynicism makes it Cha Cha Royal Sweet a tonic, full of disordered and bearable characters and ending on a warm and hopeful note. Cynics may be irritated by Raiff’s upbeat intentions, but this is a film named after the lyrics of a hopelessly bad dance song, after all.