Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022)

Cooper Raiff did just about everything on this quickly paced and rather touching comedy drama. He plays the 22-year old "Andrew", whom we first meet as a young boy who has a crush on a party starter. Dejected after his inevitable rejection, we skip on a few years to when he is using his considerable social skills to get folks up and dancing at the seemingly never ending series of bar/bat mitzvah's in his town. It's at one such gathering that he meets "Domino" (Dakota Johnson) and her autistic daughter "Lola" (a strong performance from Vanessa Burghardt). The challenge is to get the shy young girl to dance and the result is a sitter job and a relationship, of sorts, with her mother - already engaged to the frequently out of town "Joseph" (Raúl Castillo). What now ensues is a gently comedic, but quite potent story that offers the young and charismatic "Andrew" (he reminded me a lot of Jack Whitehall!) with an opportunity to shine. It's about love, yes, but it's about hope and managing expectations too; with this young man, like so many of us at that age, trying to start out in life on as sure a footing as he can. It's not all a barrel of laughs - there is plenty of emotional turmoil for him, "Domino", his mother (Leslie Mann) and for his coming-of-age brother "David" (Evan Assante) and it illustrates also quite effectively just how cruel youngsters can be to each other; and how blind loyalty from their parents doesn't help (though in this film, there are quite entertaining side-effects!). There is chemistry here between the confident Raiff and both Johnson and Burghardt, the soundtrack gets your toes tapping and the conclusion offers a reality that I rather appreciated. It's good, this.