Sean, a solitary and alienated television weatherman, drives past a middle-aged Hispanic migrant worker standing outside a hardware store looking for work. He decides to hire this kind-looking man, to paint his deck and for someone to talk to, in this darkly comedic reflection on class, ethnicity, and companionship in contemporary Los Angeles. Sean is young, gay and white; Ernesto, portly, straight and married. Despite having nothing in common and a language barrier, they build a sort of friendship, until Sean becomes consumed with a deeper obsessive need.
Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 75% rating, based on 51 reviews, with an average rating of 6.5/10. The site's consensus reads: "Papi Chulo is a cross-cultural comedy that mostly avoids the pitfalls of its premise, largely thanks to the chemistry between its well-matched leads."[8] Another aggregator, Metacritic, gave the film a score of 42 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[9]