39 Thoughts I Had While Watching ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’

I’m a real fan of going back through my treasure trove of aughts-era rom-coms I have known and loved, but today, I’m trying something different: a (gasp!) recently released film. When I heard the description for Cha Cha Real Smooth—a love affair between a bar mitzvah party motivator and a single mom—I knew I would need to see it immediately, and hearing that my queen Dakota Johnson starred in the Apple TV+ film was the cherry on top. Let’s dive in, shall we?

1. Okay, unpopular opinion: No rom-com needs to be longer than ninety minutes. This one is almost two hours! I have a life! (Okay, I don’t, but I could.)
2. Ah, the bar mitzvah dance floor. Site of so many specifically millennial small-T traumas.
3. Hey, it’s Leslie Mann! America’s hot mom!
4. Note of advice: If your tween son comes to you and tells you he’s fallen in love with an adult, you should probably dissuade him from humiliating himself by letting that love be known to said adult. Kids’ feelings are valid! Not that I’m speaking from experience, because I’ve definitely never confessed my love to a babysitter!
5. Original score by Este Haim? Oh, hell yes.
6. Okay, we’re in the future, and the little rejected kid is now a big college boy tasked with taking his brother to his bar mitzvah engagement. Sunrise, sunset!
7. The college kid’s mom is remarried to a jerk, and apparently has manic episodes.
8. OMG, not Odeya Rush, a.k.a. Jenna from Lady Bird, a.k.a. one of the best popular-girl portrayals of all time.
9. A weird joke at a potentially autistic child’s expense?
10. I’m so sorry, but I will never see Dakota Johnson in a movie and think anything other than “That’s Dakota Johnson.”
11. I do not find this male lead charming.
12. Okay, so Male Lead is charming Dakota via her daughter, and this whole storyline makes me uncomfy.
13. The daughters are “Domino” and “Lola”…is this a Kirke family reference? Where’s Jemima?
14. I’m not 100% in love with the presentation of the autistic character, but I just learned she’s actually played by an autistic actor, so that’s something, I guess?
15. All the moms are extremely horny for Male Lead.
16. Male Lead is going to be a bar mitzvah party motivator! Or “party starter,” as they put it.
17. Oh yeah, I forgot there’s a whole subplot where Male Lead is trying to go to Barcelona to low-key follow his girlfriend on her Fulbright. Let her have fun without you, man!
18. Uh-oh, Male Lead is drinking on the job.
19. This movie was so clearly made while “WAP” was topping the charts.
20. Male Lead gets kicked out of his first gig for defending Lola from bullies, but also for kind of being an aggressive asshole in general?
21. Just going to warn viewers there’s a fairly graphic miscarriage scene in this movie!
22. Lola and Male Lead bond while Dakota takes a shower, and she admits that she didn’t actually get her period at the bar mitzvah. He offers to babysit, because he’s clearly a mensch.
23. Male Lead bangs Odeya Rush in one of the more awkward sex scenes of all time.
24. I’m so bored, dude. Sorry to Dakota.
25. Male Lead and Dakota eat freezy pops (respect) and talk about depression (double respect.)
26. More bar mitzvahs!
27. Okay, some of them are probably bat mitzvahs.
28. Or they mitzvahs like Charlotte threw for Rock on And Just Like That…
29. There’s a whole subplot where Male Lead tries to help his little brother navigate his first relationship, but I’m not doing a very good job of paying attention to it.
30. Dakota has a dick boyfriend now.
31. Oh, excuse me, he’s her dick fiance.
32. Male Lead is not into Dakota having a fiance.
33. Male Lead and Dakota make out, but she wants him to quit babysitting and “go do his twenties,” which is weird, because I literally spent my entire early twenties babysitting, but whatever.
34. I’m sorry, but Male Lead genuinely is annoying.
35. Ah, okay, they’re doing the cha-cha slide at yet another bar mitzvah, which I guess is where the name of the movie comes from.
36. Male Lead professes his love to Dakota. She very politely passes.
37. Aw, the dick fiance is actually not that much of a dick, I guess?
38. Ah, L.A., city of crying while driving. (Cry-ving?)
39. OK, Male Lead gets a tutoring job. Good for him. Much better idea than Barcelona. He and Dakota part amicably, and he’s off to do his twenties. End of film!