Acclaimed Sundance film explores love, awkwardness on bar mitzvah circuit

JTA — A new Jewish coming-of-age movie commences with the hero, at age 12, receiving rejected by an older girl at a bar mitzvah.

Then the movie jumps to a decade afterwards, as the major character embarks on a profession as a bar mitzvah “party starter.”

It is an unlikely vocation for a character who isn’t Jewish, in particular a single designed and performed by someone who is not, both.

But that is the premise of “Cha Cha True Smooth,” 1 of the much more really regarded films that debuted this week at the (digital) Sundance Movie Festival, profitable the audience prize for most effective drama.

Directed by and starring the youthful filmmaker Cooper Raiff, and obtained by Apple Television+ for a $15 million distribution deal, the film uses the bar mitzvah circuit as a backdrop for an aimless young man’s maturation. Its title, a lyric from the ubiquitous DJ Casper dance monitor “Cha Cha Slide,” will prompt a Pavlovian response from any one who’s attended any shindig overseen by the likes of this film’s protagonist.

Raiff performs Andrew, a acquainted form in coming-of-age cinema: He’s a the latest school graduate without the need of a great deal way or ambition. One particular Saturday, accompanying his youthful brother (Evan Assante) to a bar mitzvah, Andrew succeeds in receiving the young children, together with an autistic lady named Lola (Vanessa Burghardt), to dance.

In spite of not being Jewish himself, Andrew is “swarmed by Jewish mothers” and persuaded to start off anything of enterprise, as a “Jig Conductor” at place bar and bat mitzvahs — a potentially rewarding hustle, as any individual who’s at any time had to approach a kosher preteen dance occasion to accompany their child’s Torah reading understands all far too very well. He also gets shut with Lola’s mother, Domino (Dakota Johnson), and the whole approach puts him on the route towards adult responsibility.

The movie’s bar mitzvah parties tumble in line with most mainstream Hollywood depictions of the situation, where it seems that the complete course at university, as properly as their mothers and fathers, are invited to each individual week’s festivities.

We do see candle lighting and Hamotzi and Kiddush blessings, while the music tends a lot less toward “Hava Nagila” and far more toward pop. When Raiff’s character performs Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B’s raunchy strike “WAP,” it leads to the accusation, from just one of the moms, that “you embarrassed Rabbi Steinberg.”

But there’s one more, more refined Jewish connection to the film’s music: Its rating was composed, in section, by Este Haim, of the rock band Haim, and whose sister Alana starred in “Licorice Pizza,” an additional modern Jewish-themed coming-of-age film.

Like his character, Raiff, whose previous movie was the school-established 2020 indie hit “Shithouse,” isn’t Jewish himself. In an job interview with Wide variety, Raiff noted he went to bar mitzvahs “every weekend” as a kid. His film however captures a lot of factors of the bar mitzvah occasion encounter, from sneaking off for first kisses, to youngsters staying nervous about remaining the initial a single to get up and dance.

There are plenty of Jewish performers in the forged, including Brad Garrett as Andrew’s stepfather, and Israeli actress Odeya Hurry, most effective regarded from “Lady Bird” and the Israeli drama collection “Baalat HaChalomot,” taking part in a everyday girlfriend. And Leslie Mann, who plays Andrew’s mom, is married to prolific Jewish director Judd Apatow, who has manufactured several motion pictures like this a person about 20-a little something guy-little ones (sometimes played by Seth Rogen) getting belated ways toward escalating up.

The movie depicts a reasonably secular lifestyle in which seemingly each spouse and children in city with a child that age, regardless of whether Jewish or not, gathers with each other each individual 7 days at a bar or bat mitzvah. It is a area wherever Jews really feel comfortable welcoming their gentile neighbors into the synagogue, even though also trusting a non-Jew to get the dancing commenced. Johnson’s character even states, at one place, that she from time to time envies Judaism.

Whether all this represents a heartwarming illustration of interfaith harmony, or a shameful watering down of the sacred coming-of-age ritual — with the non-Jewish protagonist profiting from his cultural appropriation — may possibly quite well arise as a contentious discussion once people start out observing the motion picture.

“Cha Cha Actual Smooth” will arrive on Apple Television+, despite the fact that there is no word on the timing of its release, or whether or not it will have a operate in theaters as well.