{"id":10040631,"date":"2025-02-03T16:49:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T21:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/?p=10040631"},"modified":"2025-02-06T05:47:26","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T10:47:26","slug":"sundance-2025-serious-people-will-make-you-laugh-now-cringe-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/2025\/02\/03\/sundance-2025-serious-people-will-make-you-laugh-now-cringe-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Sundance 2025: ‘Serious People’ will make you laugh now, cringe later"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Editor\u2019s Note<\/strong>: Vanyaland Film Editor Nick Johnston is back from Park City, Utah, where he covered the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, but the fun isn’t over just yet. Keep it locked to our full coverage of Sundance reviews<\/a> from this year\u2019s festival as they go live, and check out our full archives of past editions<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doppelganger stories are tales almost as old as time itself \u2013 all you have to do is put on some wool sleeves and lie to your dad, and the next thing you know, you\u2019re reenacting an imposter story straight from biblical times. We love a good fake and a better con: They\u2019re audacious, vaguely terrifying, and can transcend seemingly impenetrable class barriers. Paupers rarely become princes in real life, but in Serious People<\/em><\/strong>, they can become music video directors. Pasqual Gutierrez and Ben Mullinkossin\u2019s Hollywood cringe-comedy set in the world of boutique promo studios and advertising is as desperately funny as it is mortifying to watch unfold. It\u2019s one of those faux-doc hybrids that features the participants playing exaggerated versions of themselves, with a vaguely tender heart at its core offset by how bitterly it regards how we make \u201cstatus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Playing himself, Gutierrez is, as he is in real life, a successful music video director, working hand-in-hand with his friend and co-director Raul (Raul Sanchez) on a number of high-profile projects. OVO has just hired them to direct a new Drake video (Kendrick fans, be warned). Even though it\u2019s a can\u2019t-miss opportunity for the two, Pasqual has a major problem: His wife Christine, a director in her own right, is in the third trimester of pregnancy, and she wants him to be there for her in the days before she gives birth. Raul doesn\u2019t want to direct the project alone \u2013 they\u2019re a team, for God\u2019s sake \u2013 and he starts getting hyper-anxious. Feeling the pull between his personal and professional life, he decides to do something gutsy: he begins interviewing actors to take his place on the set (and in all things professional) while he attends to her. After all, Drake and company don\u2019t know what he looks like, nor does the crew they\u2019ll hire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After holding an open casting call, Pasqual settles on a security guard, amateur boxer, and aspiring actor named Miguel (Miguel Huerta) to be his stand-in during production. He sees something of himself in the dude \u2013 his younger self, that is \u2013 and begins to walk him through the paces of what he\u2019ll be doing. That shit\u2019s all a mask, though: they\u2019re mostly just hanging out and having fun, as Pasqual gets to indulge himself in the reckless shit he used to back in the day, though at a remove, while he also takes care of Christine. The problem is that Miguel is, well, a goober. He quickly realizes the power of his position and blows up almost every single aspect of the production \u2013 fucking up location scouting trips to strip clubs, meetings with Drake\u2019s team, auditions for dancers, and the shoot itself \u2013 almost as if he\u2019s pathologically sabotaging Pasqual\u2019s career. Raul\u2019s heated<\/em> about all of this, but he\u2019s going along with Pasqual, knowing how important it is for him to be with his wife. Well, until Drake finally shows up on set, and everything goes straight to hell for everybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guiterrez found the concept for the project in a dream<\/a> and used the whole story as an outlet while the factual elements of the story \u2013 his wife\u2019s pregnancy and his stress \u2013 occurred in real life. The blur of fiction and fact is fascinating, and the entire film feels like it\u2019s filmed at a gentle remove in that documentary fashion: the film almost entirely unfolds in establishing shots, the fly-on-the-wall perspective helping to highlight the weirdness of the entire situation in contrast with the seeming-normality of everything happening around it. This swell perspective on anxiety is ripe for comedy, and Gutierrez and Mullinkossin make the most of the moment. This is all due to their secret weapon, Huerta, one of the most compelling yet empathetic heels I\u2019ve seen in a recent comedy. I absolutely love this dude: He\u2019s genuinely enthusiastic about the task he\u2019s been given, yet he just cannot help himself when it comes to wrecking the vibe on a music video set, and the resolution to his story is one of the most hilariously insightful commentaries on how one makes friends and influences people in the industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, then again, that\u2019s the whole point of Serious People<\/em>: Success means different things in the personal and professional spheres, and one\u2019s role is always subject to a potential recasting if one errs too far away from the overlap. You might have to watch a quarter of it through your fingers, but Gutierrez and Mullinkossin have made some really worthwhile autofiction \u2013 a genre I normally don\u2019t care too much for. I guess that\u2019s what happens when you start from the bottom and get here, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: Vanyaland Film Editor Nick Johnston is back from Park City, Utah, where he covered the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, but the fun isn’t over just yet. Keep it locked to our full coverage of Sundance reviews from this year\u2019s festival as they go live, and check out our full archives of past editions. Doppelganger stories are tales almost as old as time itself \u2013 all you have to do is put on some wool sleeves and lie to your dad, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":10040632,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19452],"tags":[1821,20180,26409,14374,35361,21272,35309],"class_list":["post-10040631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-filmtv","tag-drake","tag-film-review","tag-header","tag-mockumentary","tag-serious-people","tag-sundance","tag-sundance-2025"],"yoast_head":"\nSundance 2025: 'Serious People' will make you laugh now, cringe later<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Music video director 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