Movie Review: Serious People

Inspired by a dream, the idea behind Pasqual Gutierrez and Ben Mullinkosson’s Serious People is an intriguing one. Finding it increasingly difficult to balance the demands of his professional career and family life, Pasqual (playing himself) hires a lookalike named Miguel (Miguel Huerta) to stand-in for him at an upcoming music video shoot for Drake, which he is supposed to codirect as one half of Cliqua with his partner RJ Sanchez (also playing himself). RJ is understandably non-plussed by the scheme but reluctantly agrees to go along with it.

Pasqual’s wife Christine Yuan (herself), expecting to deliver the couple’s first child the same day as the planned shoot, is more eager to try the idea, especially as she has found herself feeling increasingly isolated at home. But while Miguel certainly looks very convincingly similar to Pasqual, he is kind of an idiot, and like many idiots is also overly confident in his abilities. As such, RJ is growing increasingly frustrated with him, Christine is upset that Pasqual has to spend so much time managing his doppelgänger, and the music video is looking more and more like it’s going to be a disaster.

This sounds like the perfect set-up for a classic farce, but the results are more akin to aimless mumblecore. Having everyone play themselves and revisit a series of significant moments from Gutierrez’s actual life to improv their way through them, processing their genuine thoughts and feelings, blurs the lines between fiction and nonfiction in an intriguing way, though in the end it doesn’t quite work. No one gives a bad performance, but no one gives a great one either and some decisions, especially Pasqual’s are baffling to an almost infuriating degree.

It quickly becomes apparent to everyone except Pasqual that Miguel is not going to work and watching him blithely allow this destructive force to threaten his very livelihood and therefore his family’s security is more enervating than humorous. There are a few funny moments, but by the time they land it’s hard not to be both too annoyed and bored to get much out of them. In the end Serious People is more of a good idea than a good movie, and while Gutierrez does seem to have something to say about the demands of balancing a career with a family, it’s a little too muddled to resonate in any meaningful way. ★★