2025 | rated R | starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, Chris Evans, Zoe Winters | written & directed by Celine Song | 1 hr 56 mins | 3 1/2 out of 5 |
A materialistic hot shot at a New York matchmaking service for the wealthy, Lucy, (Dakota Johnson) meets a wealthy potential client in Harry (Pedro Pascal) who is more interested in her than the service. As Lucy navigates the increasingly impossible demands of her clients she is drawn back to her ex, John (Chris Evans), a poor theater actor who can’t offer her a future.
Materialists may have come out at the wrong time and marketed at the wrong crowd. Given its three Entertainment Tonight – ready Hollywood leads, all of which are currently overexposed (you can see a trailer for 2 more Pedro Pascal movies while at a Pedro Pascal movie), and a marketing campaign that portrays the movie as a love-triangle rom-com, it’s bound to disappoint the audience roped in by that. Materialists works better when seen simply as the 2nd feature by Celine Song, who exploded out of the gate just 2 years ago with her excellent platonic love story Past Lives. Where that movie was all atmosphere and emotion, this one is an almost clinical look at the details of modern dating in a hyper contemporary way. It feels like a snapshot in time. While every other movie is trapped in either a pre-social media stasis or trying to figure out the new world in which men and women hate each other, careers are more valued than love and marriage and status symbols matter more than emotions, this will be one of the movies you can show future generations what the dating scene was like in the 2020s.
For me, the workmanship Song takes to detail Lucy’s job as a matchmaker for the wealthy was infinitely more important that the B-story of her love life. Thankfully, this is the thrust of the film as Lucy struggles to create a match for a less-than-glamorous client (Zoe Winters, great in the unflattering role) and Lucy talks about her clients like merchandise, their relative value in terms of age and height, their expiration dates. It’s all perfectly calculated and, while niche as a job, represents the world of dating apps in a more cinematic way that watching people swiping on phones. The role allows Lucy to speak with frustration what people are unknowing (?) doing in their own matching choices. For decades men have been shown to be superficial in their dating preferences (Shallow Hal comes to mind). Materialists is the first movie to embrace women’s preferences for height and the phenomenon of men of surgically breaking their legs to get a few extra inches taller. A surgery that’s happening in the East and slowly moving toward the West.
Like Past Lives, Materialists is also beautifully New York. It always impressive when someone can make the most photographed city in the world feel like a lived-in place again. Those looking for a traditional rom com will be disappointed by the movies’ procedural tone. Probably more by the lack of chemistry between the performers. Johnson, famous for sleepwalking through roles with a dry, sarcastic delivery, fits like a glove into the dry, sarcastic requirements for Lucy. And Pascal is about as likeable as he’s ever been. It’s when characters need to start emoting when things aren’t sold to us. The movie is on point in its characterization of Lucy as a shallow person who cares more about money and things than love. It then puts her on a journey where she is to shed that materialism and chose love with John over materialism with Harry. The problem is two-fold – the movie doesn’t seem to recognize that this classic story has now been inverted by social media and TikTok is full of women who identify with Lucy as the heroine from jump street and ideal just the way she is. In the social media age materialism is good and box-checking is normal.
Problem 2 is to get to this endpoint convincingly; Chris Evans’ John would need to be a great guy who just happens to be poor and Pascal’s Harry would have to be a rich jerk. The movie is more nuanced with Harry delivering a 2nd act reveal that makes him very sympathetic. Likewise, Evans comes off as his pre-Captain America early 2000’s jerk persona again. Not only is he poor, but he’s unmotivated, stubborn, has no future and no personality or sense of humor. He’s a complete dud.
While I’m ambivalent about the ending and if Song has earned the classic riches to rags story, I appreciated the journey. The writing is excellent here with some keenly observed satire by Song. I often say that acting is the last thing to spoil a production, but in this case it’s the bad casting and detached performances that step in and derail the story. Otherwise, Materialists would have been one of the standout movies of the year.