Fame-Adjacent and Painfully Funny About It

Read Time:5 Minute, 46 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Serious People
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Genre: Comedy, Drama
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 26m
Director(s): Pasqual Gutierrez, Ben Mullinkosson
Writer(s): Pasqual Gutierrez, Ben Mullinkosson
Cast: Pasqual Gutierrez, Christine Yuan, RJ Sanchez, Miguel Huerta
Where to Watch: opens theatrically on November 14, 2025, in Los Angeles (Laemmle Glendale) with a regional theatrical expansion to major cities and a nationwide VOD Release to follow on December 16

RAVING REVIEW: SERIOUS PEOPLE starts with a straightforward, sharp what-if: right as a music-video director is about to become a father, the biggest job of his career lands in his inbox. He wants to be there for the birth and maintain his momentum. The solution he lands on is very Los Angeles—don’t miss the gig; just find someone to play you. From that premise, the film builds a funny, awkward, and occasionally bracing exploration of authorship, ego, and the economy of attention that treats human beings like interchangeable brand assets.

Pasqual Gutierrez and Ben Mullinkosson stage it as autofiction—performed versions of real relationships, real anxieties, and real career pressures. It’s part mock-doc, part hangout comedy, and part reality-check for anyone who pretends “work” and “life” sit on opposite sides of a neat line. The camera often hangs back in wide frames that refuse to rescue the characters with fast cuts. Instead, conversations unfurl at the speed of embarrassment; jokes breathe; silences hang; and you feel the secondhand discomfort of a room where everyone knows they’re being watched and performs anyway.

The central thought runs on identity as labor. If a director’s job is a mixture of taste, trust, and power, how much of that can be outsourced to a convincing double? In clout-heavy circles, people sell versions of themselves all day. SERIOUS PEOPLE literalizes that hustle, then asks how ethical it feels when the version you’re selling starts interfering with the one you owe your family. The film is at its best when the doppelgänger idea stops being a bit and becomes a pressure test: if your duplicate can show up for you, what becomes of the private person who has to live with the consequences?

Gutierrez, playing himself, is both the lead and the subject. He’s self-aware enough to be funny about his blind spots and vulnerable enough to show them without a protective cover. Christine Yuan, also playing herself, consistently grounds the movie; her on-screen retort carries the weight of a partner who has learned to triage someone else’s emergencies while negotiating her own ambitions. RJ Sanchez’s presence adds a unique texture; you can sense years of genuine collaboration beneath arguments that begin as creative disagreements and evolve into existential questions. Miguel Huerta, as the man hired to inhabit Pasqual’s public role, brings an understated sweetness that makes the ethical mess more complicated: it’s hard to villainize the stand-in when he’s the only one who isn’t faking confidence.

Stylistically, the filmmaking style relies on long, minimally interrupted scenes that feel organic rather than imposed. The choice gives the comedy a lived-in quality—those small, defensive laughs people use when they’re trying not to escalate; those unsupported pauses when the room realizes a line has been crossed. The approach pays off in sequences where professional and personal blur into a single conversation. A rapper’s video treatment, a budget line, a schedule conflict—each friction point becomes a proxy for a larger fear: am I being replaced, or have I already replaced myself with the persona that keeps my career afloat?

The overarching shape is clear: ambition and love pull in different directions, and no clever workaround—certainly not a human decoy—can absolve you from choosing where to be when it matters. New fatherhood reframes every decision: the person who once optimized days for prestige projects now has to account for a future that isn’t about credit or clout. SERIOUS PEOPLE catches that pivot in real time, not as a moral lecture but as a collection of messy attempts to have everything at once.

The film also sneaks in a subtle critique of authorship. Who is a director if not the one who convinces people to trust their taste? If a stand-in can mimic the performance of authority, is authority mostly performance? There’s a sly, self-lacerating honesty in the way the movie stages that question. The double can imitate the posture—gestures, jargon, meeting-room cadence—but what’s missing are the relationships and the invisible hours of proof that built them. The disaster that follows isn’t just a punchline; it’s a reminder that soft power is still power and misusing it has a body count—lost time, blown budgets, frayed friendships.

As a comedy, SERIOUS PEOPLE is sharp enough to jab but affectionate enough to avoid bitter aftertaste. As a portrait of creatives in a reputation economy, it perceives patterns that many movies about the industry miss: how every compromise leaves a bruise, and how every dishonest one leaves a scar. The film’s method won’t be for everyone, the quiet insistence on hanging back may feel indulgent—but its authenticity and self-interrogation give it staying power. A smart, personal satire with real heart, uneven in spots but resonant and genuinely funny. It earns its place in the growing queue of films about self-performance, and it does so with enough humility to feel like more than a stunt.

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