Materialists (3 stars out of 4)
I had mixed feelings going into “Materialists.” Part of me was excited to see Celine Song’s newest effort, since her first film, “Past Lives,” was one of my runaway favorite movies of 2023. But I was also apprehensive, since “Materialists” was packed with more traditional A-list actors like Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal (insert your favorite joke about Pascal being in everything here). Would Song’s voice get lost in the Hollywood machine?
Coming out of “Materialists,” I also have mixed feelings, but not because Song “went Hollywood” or anything. Her new film is thoughtful, well-written, and insightful, just like “Past Lives.” But where her first film’s melancholy left me with a feeling of knowing satisfaction, “Materialists” is more of a downer, with an ending that feels a little too bleak to achieve the hopeful note it’s grasping for.
The film centers around the love life of a professional New York matchmaker named Lucy (Johnson). To her, marriage is a business—literally and figuratively—and though she’s been quite successful at her job, having produced nine marriages, her grasp of marital success is tied to purely empirical factors like wealth, education, and in the case of men, height and hairline.
When Lucy meets an uber-wealthy financial guru at her client’s wedding, she thinks she may have stumbled on a unicorn. Harry (Pascal) is tall, handsome, and rich, but he’s also thoughtful, stylish, and engaging. He also seems to be genuinely interested in Lucy, which her own insecurities interpret as a red flag. But she pursues the relationship to be sure.
In the meantime, the same wedding brings her ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans) back into her life. John is a struggling actor, working as an event server to keep up his share of the rent in an apartment that pales next to Harry’s 12-million-dollar penthouse.
It isn’t a unique love triangle. In fact, “Materialists” often had me thinking of “Reality Bites,” a similar movie I don’t think I’ve seen since the 1990s. In thirty years, the question hasn’t changed: is it better to pursue wealth and security, or to find “true love” in poverty and sincerity? Is that the only choice?
Even if the question is similar, putting Song in charge suggests “Materialists” won’t default to any cliched or routine endings. In fact, that’s one of the biggest challenges with a movie that doesn’t fit into the bounds of genres like a traditional romantic comedy. A lesser movie might have made the choice more two-dimensional and obvious, but Song tries to inject some cold hard reality and nuance into a relatable quandary.
And yet, the results are mixed. To help underscore the idea that what works on paper may not translate to real life, a subplot about one of Lucy’s clients takes a very dark turn when a set-up leads to a sexual assault. And though the lead characters try to say the right things, by the end of the movie you aren’t entirely convinced that their lessons will stick. But maybe that’s what Song is trying to say?
This is far from a Meg Ryan-brand romantic comedy, by intention, but the outcome of “Materialists” still feels a little too sober. Its characters struggle to find hope in the face of cynicism, and at best, a viewer hoping to make some sense of 21st century dating will find a filmmaker who shares their pain. But the light at the end of the tunnel is still very fleeting.
Maybe it’s because dating in New York City really is that miserable and materialistic. Maybe Johnson’s depiction of Lucy just isn’t sympathetic enough. Maybe “Past Lives” just set too high a standard. “Materialists” is good, and good-intentioned, but the sum total of its parts feel more bleak than hopeful. 30+ years later, it seems that reality still bites.
“Materialists” is rated R for scattered profanity and mild sexual content.