‘Materialists’ Review – The Most Cynical Rom-Dramedy of the Year is a Baffling Mess

Following up Past Lives was always going to be difficult in my estimation. That movie is one that remains near and dear to my heart. It’s a movie that has affected me emotionally in ways I’m almost embarrassed to admit.

So it’s conflicting to come away from Celine Song’s second feature Materialists feeling so . . . conflicted.
On the one hand, I like that it pulls a fast one on its audience. The way the film is marketed, the premise, the cast of beautiful actors playing beautiful people living in New York City—all of these things set you up to expect a classic rom-com, the kind that were everywhere in the 1990s and early 2000s.

I expect a lot of people who watched the trailer for this and went in thinking they would get just that will be sorely disappointed.

Rather than a light, airy rom-com, Materialists is, in some ways, interested in subverting the tropes of the traditional rom-com. These are the parts of the movie I quite liked. It’s refreshingly honest about the vapidness of modern dating, the way that relationships have always been rooted in a sort of transactional exchange, be it financial, social, or otherwise.

Despite that, we still have to believe that love—true love, the kind we’ve been conditioned to expect from the kind of movies this one appears to be at first glance—is possible. It’s an absurd thing that I think Song is interested in exploring. How can relationships be materialistic, value-based, and quantifiable, yet love, the driving force behind most of them, remains completely intangible and unpredictable?

Dakota Johnson, I’d argue, is perfectly cast as Lucy, an emotionally inscrutable woman who works as a matchmaker and believes that love is just a mathematical problem, an equation that can be solved. She wants material comfort, and that’s where Pedro Pascal’s Harry comes in. He’s rich, handsome, but also kind—what they call a unicorn in Lucy’s profession. But, in classic rom-com fashion, she’s faced with another romantic option in the form of her broke, wannabe-actor ex, played by Chris Evans.

The irony of the film, of course, is that while Lucy ostensibly trades in love, she has no idea what it really is. Love is the one thing that can upset her worldview, because it’s not quantifiable or predictable or about checking boxes on a sheet of paper.

This is quite interesting, and I suspect the movie’s view of modern dating and love will resonate with a lot of people. However, while the potential to explore these questions and ideas is high, the movie fumbles in its execution.

Whereas Past Lives was quiet and understated and subtle, Materialists hits you with its themes over the head. Despite that, I couldn’t quite get a lock on what the movie wanted me to take away. It’s in many ways deeply deeply cynical about dating and our ability to connect through a consumerist approach to relationships that places value and material qualities over everything else. Yet, the ending seems to go back and reinstate the rom-com fantasy of love without irony. There’s some ambiguity there, but it’s not enough to make the film feel cohesive based on what was presented to us earlier.

I couldn’t tell if the characters were intended to be broad cyphers to prove the film’s point, with performances to match—or if they were just poorly written and poorly acted. Or maybe it’s that the movie is simply more interested in philosophizing about modern dating and love and the role of value in romantic relationships than it is in creating believable fully realized characters.

You’d think a romance would offer more insight into the inner lives of its characters, yet we hardly know anything about them beyond their professions. Ironically, the movie seems to treat them sort of like merchandise, despite its thesis supposedly being that people can’t be reduced to a marketable list of features.

It’s quite likely I went into this movie with too-high expectations, and that impacted my viewing experience. But it’s also a very inconsistent and, in many ways, strange and inscrutable movie. There are tonal shifts that don’t completely work. The movie’s sense of humour is subtle and largely worked for me, but then it’s also quite serious and there’s a heavy subplot that feels very underserved, which largely didn’t work for me.

Despite all these criticisms, I didn’t hate the movie. There’s a lot here that I did like and thought was smart, and the movie is undeniably nice to look at (beautifully shot on film). But the more I sit with it, the more confused I am about what it’s actually trying to say.

Verdict

As someone who adored Past Lives, I wanted to love Materialists so badly. But the predominant feeling I left the theatre with was confusion. I think there are elements here that are very compelling, and at least the movie is trying to do something interesting with age-old formulas and themes. However, the baffling tonal shifts, odd performances, and unclear messaging make the overall package hard to buy into.

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