The Broadway is currently showing two of my favorite films from Sundance this year so I decided to see them both as a double feature yesterday. I started with Cha Cha Real Smooth, which was the darling of the festival, and I think I enjoyed it even more the second time. After graduating from college, Andrew (Cooper Raiff) is at loose ends because his girlfriend has moved to Barcelona to study and he living at home in the suburbs with his mom (Leslie Mann), stepdad (Brad Garrett), and younger brother David (Evan Assante) while working a dead end job at the food court in the mall. When asked to drive David to a Bat Mitzvah, he crashes the party and eventually gets everyone dancing. He meets Domino (Dakota Johnson) and impresses her when he is able to get her autistic daughter Lola (Vanessa Burghardt) out on the dance floor. All of the other mothers are impressed with his energy and enthusiasm so they hire him to be a party starter for all of their upcoming Bat and Bar Mitzvahs which keeps him in frequent contact with Domino. They eventually form a complicated friendship. Domino flirts with him because, even though she is engaged, he makes her feel young and carefree and he believes that he is in love with her because he feels needed by both her and Lola. Their relationship eventually runs its course after Domino finds the courage to commit to her fiance and Andrew finds some direction in his life. This is a heartfelt and charming coming of age story with incredibly appealing performances from Raiff, who is as irrepressible as a puppy, Johnson, who is absolutely luminous, and Burghardt, who steals every scene she is in. Even though I am a bit older (ahem) than the target audience I really related to the main character because I also felt completely lost during this period in my life. I loved everything about this film (the attention to detail with all of the Bat and Bar Mitzvah themes is a highlight) and I left the theater with a huge smile on my face. Go see it!
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