‘Serious People’ Review: Work-Life Balance Takes on New Meaning in This Witty, Absurdist Grindset Satire
Directing music videos is easy. All you have to do is sit there, act confident, and never let on that you have no idea what you’re doing. The client is most likely an idiot; tell them the end result will be “cinematic” and they usually shut up. And if someone really starts to press, say that you’ll “have to check with your producer.” That will buy you some time.
This is the advice that Pasqual (Pasqual Gutierrez) gives to the doppelg?nger (sorta — he’s shorter, but whatever) he hires to take his place on the set of a big artist’s “return to form” in Gutierrez and Ben Mullinkosson’s playful docu-fiction hybrid “Serious People.” Doubles, and the idea of being replaced by one, are often the stuff of horror in the movies. Here, being replaceable is a relief, as Pasqual struggles to balance his career as half of a successful directing duo with the demands of impending parenthood.
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A sense of winking absurdity permeates “Serious People,” which thankfully does not take Pasqual’s world of clout chasers and self-proclaimed “hypebeasts” very seriously at all. Pasqual recognizes that it’s ridiculous to miss the birth of your first child because you’re filming a scene where a rapper throws fake money at women dancing on stripper poles. However, babies are expensive, and these jobs pay. A lot.
Enough to buy the BMW convertible with the vanity plate that reads “CLIQUA,” the name Gutierrez uses for his projects with RJ Sanchez. Sanchez also plays himself in the film, and in real life the duo have directed videos for Bad Bunny, The Weeknd, Travis Scott, and Rosalia. In “Serious People,” it’s Drake — represented here by his manager over Zoom, with a PA holding a laptop as his on-set surrogate — who’s making their lives difficult. Pasqual and RJ’s partnership gives “Serious People” some real stakes: If Pasqual’s plan goes wrong, as it almost certainly will, it’s not just his career that’s at risk. It’s RJ’s, too.
But the most interesting relationship in the film isn’t between Pasqual and RJ, or even between Pasqual and his wife Christine (Christine Yuan, also as herself), for whom he’s ostensibly staging this whole farce. The dynamic between Pasqual and his double Miguel (Miguel Huerta) is fascinating, for a couple of reasons: First, Miguel is hilarious. Many of the movie’s numerous laugh-out-loud moments come from Huerta and his performance, whether he’s using cheesy pickup lines on one of Christine’s friends or yelling about Marvel movies and IMAX.
But Miguel — who comes from East L.A., just like Pasqual — also represents Pasqual’s mixed feelings about making it out of his old neighborhood and into the creative class. He’s cruder, more confrontational, less accustomed to the ways of lawyers and financiers than Pasqual and RJ. And once he’s presented with the fringe benefits of Pasqual’s position, he turns into his raging id and evil twin almost immediately. But Pasqual defends him, saying that Miguel reminds him of himself. “It’s like a glorified mentorship,” he explains to an annoyed RJ.
There’s an arch layer of racial commentary to Pasqual’s plan: The film opens with a scene of Pasqual holding auditions for the role of himself (again, shades of a horror film, namely Takashi Miike’s “Audition”). These cycle through a series of Mexican-American “types,” the clean-shaven ones accented by a silly paste-on costume mustache. And a big inspiration for this nutty idea was the fact that people often confuse RJ and Pasqual. So, Pasqual cynically concludes, if the people he works with can’t tell the difference anyway, then any Mexican guy who looks enough like him will do. Right?
This all builds to a climax not unlike an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” a comparison that’s supported by the conditions under which “Serious People” was made. Scenes set at Pasqual and Christine’s condo were shot at their actual home; a baby-shower scene is filled with their actual friends, including co-director Mullinkosson. The inception of the project was not unlike the inception of Pasqual’s scheme in the movie, and the end credits show Gutierrez and Yuan with their real-life daughter, who was born shortly after the film wrapped.
Yuan is actually pregnant in the film, and one downside of “Serious People” focusing on Pasqual’s inner conflict is that she’s too often relegated to the nagging wife role. She’s as funny as the men around her — “I wish I was your phone, so you would be touching me all the time,” she complains — and there’s a parallel movie unfolding from her point of view where her husband is gradually replaced with a cockier fuckboy version of himself. The film does save some time for tender moments, and a scene at an OB-GYN’s office makes a dry mockery of the American healthcare system that feels very much rooted in experience. But the balance is a little off, another meta element in a movie that’s built on them.
Much of “Serious People” was improvised, with the leads playing fictionalized versions of themselves. Luckily, they’re all charismatic people who are used to the presence of cameras, so they feel natural on screen. More importantly, however, this dynamic channels real offscreen tensions into onscreen confrontations, which lends an emotional reality to the situation as Pasqual’s life spirals out of control. The film stumbles a bit on multiple climaxes, but recovers nicely for a bitterly funny stinger.
Even the visual style, which alternates between expressive closeups and passive wide shots, reflects the blend of artifice and reality. Whatever “reality” means when you live in the flashy world of celebrity smoke and mirrors, anyway. When faced with real-life challenges, a filmmaker’s first impulse is often to make a movie about it. Witty and self-deprecating, “Serious People” is the best possible outcome in that scenario.
Grade: B+
“Serious People” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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