Serious People

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1:48

Serious People

2025

1h 26m

Comedy

Drama

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Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

67%

Tomatometer

15 Reviews

Popcornmeter

Fewer than 50 Ratings

Successful Music Video director Pasqual Gutierrez is faced with a dilemma on the due date of his first-born child: a job offer for his biggest video yet. Frustrated with his poor work/life balance, Gutierrez casts a doppelgänger named Miguel to take over his work duties in his director duo Cliqua as he prepares to take an extended paternity leave. But as Pasqual starts to spend more time with Miguel to teach him how to step into this new role, Pasqual's relationship and his work suffer, ending with a disastrous music video shoot. SERIOUS PEOPLE explores what it means to be a "director," a parent, and the replaceability of people in clout-heavy Los Angeles.

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Katie Rife

IndieWire

02/09/2025

B+

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.

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Siddhant Adlakha

Variety

02/03/2025

Remarkable naturalism and immense absurdity sit shoulder-to-shoulder. However, as notable as this tension may be, the novelty of the movie’s tonal dissonance eventually wears out, thanks to a story of swapped identities with no real end goal in mind.

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Robert Daniels

RogerEbert.com

01/30/2025

The humor in “Serious People” is often too dry and too inside baseball to resonate.

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Weiting Liu

The Brooklyn Rail

Jun 10

Serious People says, "Life’s a movie." We may dream of living life like a movie, or of making movies for a living, but life itself should always be the end goal.

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Emma Vine

Loud and Clear Reviews

Mar 2

2/5

Serious People relies on the same comedic beats to pad its runtime, resulting in a feature-length film that would have worked better as a short.

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Alise Chaffins

MacGuffin or Meaning (Substack)

Dec 9

3.5

While the movie takes a minute to really settle into the story, once it does, this comedy of errors is absolutely hilarious.

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Carlos C

Dec 15

Super funny, absurdist. Very LA. Started doc-vibes ended full fiction. Great cinematography, too. Felt fresh and funny. I recommend it.

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Tom F

@RT55173143 Apr 24

An entertaining if not very satisfying reflection on the show biz life.

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Patricia B

@PattyQB Mar 25

Very Los Angeles, very naturalistic. I felt the stakes rise, with Miguel's growing incompetence alongside Christine's need for her partner. The end was funny as hell, maybe a bit "unearned," a little rushed. I enjoyed this one a lot.

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Pasqual Gutierrez

Director

Ben Mullinkosson

Director

Pasqual Gutierrez

Pasqual

Christine Yuan

Christine

Miguel Huerta

Miguel

Spencer Creigh

Actor

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Serious People: Trailer 1

1:48

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Synopsis

Successful Music Video director Pasqual Gutierrez is faced with a dilemma on the due date of his first-born child: a job offer for his biggest video yet. Frustrated with his poor work/life balance, Gutierrez casts a doppelgänger named Miguel to take over his work duties in his director duo Cliqua as he prepares to take an extended paternity leave. But as Pasqual starts to spend more time with Miguel to teach him how to step into this new role, Pasqual's relationship and his work suffer, ending with a disastrous music video shoot. SERIOUS PEOPLE explores what it means to be a "director," a parent, and the replaceability of people in clout-heavy Los Angeles.

Director: Pasqual Gutierrez, Ben Mullinkosson
Producer: Ryan Hahn, Laurel Thomson, Teddy Lee
Screenwriter: Pasqual Gutierrez, Ben Mullinkosson
Distributor: Tribeca Films / Memory
Production Co: HPLA, Tribeca Enterprises , Long Holiday, 2AM, Florence Creative
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Nov 14, 2025, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Dec 16, 2025
Runtime: 1h 26m

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