‘Cha Cha’ is poignant, surprising coming-of-age tale

The glow sticks. The neon lanyards. DJs playing wildly inappropriate songs. The mocktails, the tipsy grown-ups, the awkward adolescent kisses in photo booths.

Finally, a feature film set on the suburban bar mitzvah party circuit.

But there’s more than just cleverly observed cultural comedy at play in “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” the second feature by writerdirector Cooper Raiff, who also stars in this poignant and accomplished comingof-age tale about the years right after college — when you’re trying to figure out not just what to do, but who to be.

And it’s not just Raiff’s character, a newly minted college grad who earns money as a “party starter” at bar mitzvahs, who’s coming of age. With a lovely, touching turn by comes from the 2000 party anthem “Cha Cha Slide,” that infectious line dance number that’s a reliable staple at bar or bat mitzvah parties, proms and more (“Cha cha now y’all.”). Raiff himself, though not Jewish, spent almost every weekend on the bar mitzvah circuit when he was 13 and growing up in Dallas, and let’s just say the man knows his way around a candle-lighting ceremony.

We begin with a flashback to a 13-year-old Andrew, at a bar mitzvah of course, who develops a deep crush for the adult female “party starter” — the one who gets kids dancing — and declares his love in the parking lot, only to be left heartbroken: “I’m old,” she says.

Ten years later, Andrew’s just graduated Tulane, and trying to answer the question every onscreen graduate has been asked since, well, “The Graduate”: What now? His girlfriend has a

Fulbright to Barcelona but doesn’t seem keen for him to tag along.

So he’s living at home with his supportive mom (a perfectly cast Leslie Mann) and her annoying husband (Brad Garrett), working at a fast-food joint called Meat Sticks, and sharing a room with his middle-school brother who’s smack in the middle of bar mitzvah season. Accompanying his brother to a party one night, he finds a way to get all the kids dancing, and soon the moms are drafting him to become an official party starter.

More importantly, Andrew also meets Domino (Johnson), a young mom with an autistic daughter, Lola (Vanessa Burghardt). Resigned to watching her 14-year-old daughter play with a Rubik’s Cube while the other kids party, Domino is delighted when Andrew finds a way to get Lola dancing, too.

APPLE TV+ VIA AP