Cha Cha Real Smooth follows Andrew, a college graduate with no plan and a summer to kill, who stumbles into a job hyping up bar and bat mitzvah crowds — and into an unlikely bond with a mother and her teenage daughter.
What is Cha Cha Real Smooth about?
Andrew is back home in New Jersey, sleeping in his childhood bedroom and watching his younger brother inherit his old bedroom rules. A party-planner spots his talent for getting shy kids onto the dance floor and hires him as a professional icebreaker for the local bar and bat mitzvah circuit. At one of those parties he meets Domino and her autistic teenage daughter Lola, and the three form a connection that has nothing to do with the job and everything to do with two people figuring out what comes next while a third watches and learns from both of them. Cooper Raiff writes, directs, and stars, working in the same coming-of-age register that put him on the map, but pointing it here at the strange, suspended after-college years instead of adolescence itself. The film keeps its comedy loose and its heart close to the surface, and it treats Lola as a real character with her own voice rather than a plot device for Andrew's growth.
About the cast
Cooper Raiff carries the lead role himself opposite Dakota Johnson as Domino, with Vanessa Burghardt as Lola, Evan Assante, Leslie Mann, Brad Garrett, Raúl Castillo, and Amara Pedroso Saquel rounding out the cast that surrounds Andrew's summer.
Context & significance
The film comes from the United States and premiered to strong reviews, earning a place among the more warmly received festival comedies of 2022. It sits in the same lane as other low-key, dialogue-driven American comedies about the gap between college and whatever comes after it, mixing genuine laughs with a currently unfashionable amount of sincerity.
Watching Cha Cha Real Smooth on Ktime
Cha Cha Real Smooth streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, so it plays comfortably for Farsi-speaking households as well as English speakers. Watching requires a free K-Time account login; the film's page here is readable without one.