'Cha Cha Real Smooth': The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

Sweet, comfy ode to young adulthood or one white indie wank-fest too many? YOU be the judge

One hop this time

Once upon a time I was the kind of person to religiously scour Entertainment Weekly’s seasonal movie previews (Fall basically the movie equivalent of Vogue’s September issue), highlighting everything I wanted to see and then, to really drive things home, marking release dates down on my computer calendar, with trailer links if I could find them. All of this tracks, of course, with someone who lost his virginity at 20.

I bring this up not to brag about having sex (🙏🏽) but to highlight how involved this process was for a movie super-fan in the mid-aughts, pre-streaming, with one central hub from which to plan your attack. For the average sexually active person today to keep on top of any non-Axis power (read: Disney/Marvel/Star Wars) releases, let alone leave their house to see them? Fuggedaboutit.

So when I ask if you’ve seen the movie ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’, I don’t mean it to sound condescending; that’s a genuine question! It premiered mid-June on Apple TV+, and my guess is unless you follow Sundance coverage (🙋🏼‍♀️) or pay attention to Apple’s internal banner ads, you might have gone your entire life assuming ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’¹ is just a lyric from the early aughts hit “Cha Cha Slide.” I mean it is, this will always be true, but now it’s also a gentle coming-of-age dramedy whose quality and cultural reach I’m finding… frankly impossible to gauge.

Following in the post-grad “what IS life?” movie footsteps of ‘The Graduate’, ‘Garden State’, ‘Adventureland’, and so many more, ‘CCRS’ centers a sensitive young white kid (writer-director Cooper Raiff) figuring his shit out against a backdrop of suburban malaise (New Jersey, it’s always Jersey), enchanted by an older and/or wiser woman (Dakota Johnson) who knows he just needs one magic song and/or cathartic scream to unlock his true potential. Will our guy figure said shit out? Will he leave those stultified suburban streets behind? Will Simon & Garfunkel,

The Shins,

and Rostam

collect the music royalties owed them??

In a declaration that will shock absolutely no one, I’ve loved this kind of movie forever. I too am a sensitive ha-white boy from the suburbs, almost always figuring his shit out, who is enchanted by both damaged women AND song. (Representation matters.) You could make this movie a hundred times with slightly different soundtracks and I’d buy a brand-new ticket to each one. As increasingly lame as I find MCU fanbois², I'm cut from the same brainwashed cloth. If there were a Comic-Con for coming-of-age indie dramedies, I'd go every year.

Cool Guy alert

And yup — I liked this movie just as predicted! The needle drops hit, the moments of catharsis landed. It did exactly what I wanted, the same way I assume any time I order a Big Mac that I am going to like that Big Mac³. But as I sit here days later thinking about it — or rather not thinking about it — I’m forced to ask myself: in the year of our Lord 2022, does a movie like ‘CCRS’ still need to be made? Do we… need this movie?

Take it back now, y’all

I joke about “representation” in these lily-white coming-of-age movies because, you know, I’ve never NOT been represented. Yes, it’s true that sometimes the protagonists hail from places outside New Jersey, like Connecticut, and I think “that’s a new spin”… but no, it’s largely a) the same white story with b) the same white characters having c) the same white conversations. For going on sixty years! Maybe a hundred! (I’m not familiar with the entirety of the Lumiere Brothers’ filmography.)

Even a few years ago I’m not sure I would have considered ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ a “white” movie; I would have just considered it… a movie, as though a story about a North Jersey bar mitzvah party starter falling in love with Dakota Johnson constitutes some universal human experience. (Umm, who hasn’t been there?) But as we all grow a little, finally, and expand our sense of the world and who’s telling what stories… I mean, come on, this is a white-ass movie.

Right about now is where I should be very clear — I don’t highlight “white” as a pejorative, or a designation of lameness, or a comment on the movie’s spice tolerance. I simply mean… this is a movie about white people, chronicling a very white experience, and to pretend otherwise feels like the phrase “I don’t see color” brought to vivid, blinding life.

Consider some of the other hot indie releases of the moment. ‘Fire Island’ (Hulu) is a gay, Asian-American-focused rom-com. ‘Emergency’ (Amazon) is a dark comedy about two Black friends contending with the realities of policing after stumbling on a passed-out white girl. These are movies that, perhaps by necessity, don’t shy away from their characters’ identities or what that means for their stories. They’re richer and more interesting because of it, to say nothing of the fact we’ve rarely seen them before. So if, as ‘CCRS’’s very existence suggests, there will always be movies about sensitive young straight white dudes figuring their shit out… maybe it’s time they start acknowledging these dudes are white⁴?

Right foot, let’s stomp (a Dakota Johnson interlude)

Quick sidebar to ask a challenging bordering on uncouth question I know you’ve thought yourself at some point, so let’s just be adults and admit it’s on our minds: is Dakota Johnson a good actor or is she just an incredibly hot person who picks interesting roles?

She’s bounced from sitcom work (‘Ben & Kate’) to the ‘50 Shades’ movies to, more recently, a litany of bona fide indies like ‘A Bigger Splash’, ‘Suspiria’, and ‘The Lost Daughter’. Her taste is exquisite. She shut down Ellen that one time, which was cool. But whereas I can see the ways her spiritual sister Kristen Stewart mines a very similar performance volume/speed for unexpected pathos, with Johnson it’s always just felt… distant? Too cool for school?

‘CCRS’ is the first time I felt like I got her, or anyway felt as though she were delivering a performance and not, I don’t know, using her eyes to suggest I not take that seat next to her on the plane, even though I paid for it. Any good performance really just boils down to believability (“did I believe Hugo Weaving as Megatron? …Yes”) and, playing an old-before-her-time hot Jersey mom with garden-variety depression… I believe her! I’ve met this person before, with a name even dumber than “Domino,” and for 90 minutes, felt that person brought to life. All of which is to say, I guess… maybe Dakota’s more talented than I’ve given her credit for.

Everybody clap your hands

“Did this movie need to be made?” is ultimately a facile question. ‘CCRS’ got made! It won a Sundance Audience Award. It’s on Apple TV+ now whether you watch it or not — this sweet, easy-going coming-of-age story directed with a surprising level of empathy for a 25-year-old (whose youthful success absolutely does not make the white hairs on my chin tingle with impotent jealousy, I don’t know who told you that). “Someone wanted to make it” is, in the end, really the only celluloid justification a movie needs. This includes Dinesh D’Souza’s whole filmography, as well as the ‘Air Bud’ franchise.

At the same time, it doesn’t feel unreasonable, in 2022, to demand more of the white coming-of-age genre than “sweet and easygoing.” This is hardly a political call-to-arms; I don’t think ‘CCRS’ would have benefited from, like, a Critical Race Theory subplot. But given a world with infinite stories to tell, and perspectives to share, it’s beyond time we cast away the feigned universality these kinds of movies have enjoyed to this point and just, like, wear their whiteness.

…Oh god that really does sound white power-y ABORT ABORT.

1. ‘CCRS’ from here on. You cannot make me write ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ even one more time, I won’t do it

2. Hold up, you’re telling me Wanda’s wearing a crown with horns in this one? I’m THERE.

3. Imagine for a second the guy who, every time he goes to McDonald’s, wonders what it’s going to taste like this time. The beauty of that. The terror

4. Second disclaimer: this is not, umm, like a white power thing