THE STORY – A successful music video director and expectant father pushes his work-life balance to the extreme as he hires a doppelgänger to work in his stead.
THE CAST – Pasqual Gutierrez, Christine Yuan, Miguel Huerta & Raul Sanchez
THE TEAM – Pasqual Gutierrez & Ben Mullinkosson (Directors/Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 84 Minutes
In theory, hiring a doppelgänger to handle one half of your life while you turn your focus entirely to the other isn’t the worst idea… in theory. It feels important to say the words “in theory” over and over again here, almost as a public service announcement of sorts, a safeguarding tactic to ensure that no one reads it as advice. In theory, a lookalike could handle your day job while you spend time with your very pregnant wife, doting upon her wants and needs as any good partner should. In theory, a de facto twin could take the brunt of your taxing day-to-day tasks, especially the ones you’ve been putting off for some time, as long as no one clocks the fact that this stand-in doesn’t look nor sound quite right. This scheme should go off without a hitch. You know, in theory.
The thing about theories, though, is that they don’t often take variables into account. There are too many unknowns for this particular proposition to ever really go according to plan. Emotions are a principal danger, one worth starting with. What happens if your counterpart becomes attached to something or someone in your life and suddenly doesn’t want to leave it to handle something else? What happens if they’re, simply put, a power-hungry lunatic who finds themselves placed abruptly in a position of influence and begins using it to satisfy their every whim? Overall, this proves that there is the idea of being in two places at once and then having a representative of yourself in two separate locations; what happens when the double disturbs the balance in one place, causing a ripple effect that eventually creates further chaos for the real thing?
In other words – in reality, not theory any longer – keep this sort of practice out of real life and in the movies, something Pasqual Gutierrez and Ben Mullinkosson do to mixed results in their co-directorial effort, “Serious People,” a comedy heavily focused on the errors this sort of scheme can cause as opposed to the few benefits it briefly brings. It begins with Pasqual (Gutierrez, playing a semi-fictionalized version of himself) and Raul (Raul Sanchez, ditto) soliciting a slew of actors auditioning for a part, seemingly in one of their music videos. Sure enough, however, the role is Pasqual, not a character in a video but the real deal, the director whose life has become too busy for him to handle on his own. His pregnant wife Christine (Christine Yuan, Gutierrez’s real-life spouse) is just about ready to pop when none other than Drake reaches out, hoping for Pasqual and Raul to direct the rap superstar’s next video… scheduled on Christine’s due date, of course (Presumably, this all unfolds long before “Not Like Us” was released. Drake seems far too powerful for the opposite to be the case).
After stressing about how he’ll balance a career-changing opportunity and a life-changing moment that leads to a nasty case of shingles, Pasqual comes up with the brilliant plan we see being enacted at the beginning of the film: He’ll hire a lookalike to run the music video production while he looks after his wife, affording him the success that comes with a Drake video and the happiness that comes with the birth of his first child. (Not to mention salvaging his marriage). Would that it was so simple; however, once Pasqual brings in Miguel (Miguel Huerta) to take his place, Miguel’s ambitions take over, threatening not only to hijack Pasqual and Raul’s big break but also the former’s life.
This set-up could go in one of three ways: Horror, thriller, or screwball comedy. Impressively enough, Gutierrez and Mullinkosson find some kind of middle ground between the latter two genres, crafting a seemingly improvisational romp that feels as though it’s finding its footing after Miguel’s arrival, given how deranged his behavior becomes the longer he gets a taste of the life that Pasqual and his close-knit circle have been living for longer than anyone has ever even thought about Miguel. It’s almost like watching a documentary about the unraveling of a musical partnership – Oasis, anyone? – due to how true to life most of its experiences feel and how most of its cast is playing an extension of themselves. Outside the film’s confines, Pasqual and Raul are professionally known as “Cliqua,” a music-video-directing team that has worked with the likes of Travis Scott, The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, and more; scenes set in Pasqual and Christine’s home were shot in their actual home. It’s as though Gutierrez and Mullinkosson – a real-life friend of Gutierrez’s who shows up in the film’s baby shower scene – turned a camera on the former’s life and contrived a bonkers twist to make it a bit more cinematic.
For some, that might result in the dismissal of the film as a whole, a viewer feeling as though the ridiculous outweighs the authenticity they were promised. Yet it’s worth checking your disbelief at the door here, as the film’s title wasn’t exactly meant to refer to briefcase and grey suit-donning gentlemen whose lives are as dull as they are dour. In the words of Kendrick Lamar — perhaps not how he meant them, but interpreted literally — these people are not like us. Neither are the characters in “Serious People,” but viewers are better off for it than they would be with simpler, less gonzo fare.
