'Materialists' fails to distinguish itself from standard romantic dramas
Billed as an improvement on the romantic genre, it's just more of the same with better acting.
“Materialists” is a fine movie, but there’s nothing special about it.
Advance chatter on the Celine Song film promised a more introspective, nuanced story than the usual romantic drama. It isn’t.
Any regular consumer of Hollywood plots knows what’s going to happen once we meet the three main characters. Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, a professional matchmaker.
She caters to the shallow preferences of vacuous, wealthy New York singles who spend more time discussing income and body mass index than personality or shared interests.
Lucy believes love is a kind of math equation, but she promises lonely clients — worried they’ll die alone — that they’ll meet the love of their lives.
Lucy is good at her job. The film opens with her office celebrating the ninth wedding spawned by her matches. She attends the latest ceremony, where she meets Harry, played by Pedro Pascal, who seems to be in 73% of all movies these days.
Harry is a rich bachelor who finds himself attracted to Lucy. The two begin the predictable flirting at the reception. Lucy orders a beer and a Coke. A waiter immediately sets the odd combination before her.
The waiter, of course, is Lucy’s ex, John, played by Chris Evans.
Thus, the love triangle is formed. This should have been a moment for Song, who also wrote the film, to build some emotional intensity. She doesn’t.
Nerds might superimpose Evans’s and Pascal’s more famous roles onto their rather bland “Materialists” characters. Is this a contest between Captain America (Evans) and the Mandalorian (Pascal) for Johnson’s affections?
The premise is more fun than the actual plot.
“Materialists” plays out in perfunctory fashion. If the nuance is meant to lie in the characters’ depth, it’s either so subtle as to be unrecognizable or, more likely, simply not there at all.
Harry is kind and wealthy. He takes her on expensive dates and lavishes her with gifts. John is a down-on-his-luck actor who lives with slovenly roommates and works as a caterer.
When John lands a part in a play, he invites Lucy, who brings Harry. The play is awful, but Lucy and Harry are polite. They go for drinks at a nearby bar, where Lucy and John reminisce about their relationship while poor Harry sits at a nearby table.
They spar in their chat, seemingly to cement Lucy’s choice of Harry as her future husband. Harry “checks a lot of boxes,” the cliché phrase Lucy uses as part of her fractured calculus when matching her clients.
Then something goes wrong at work, causing Lucy to rethink both her career and her romantic choices. Harry had planned to take Lucy to Iceland for an extended trip, but Lucy seeks out John for comfort, and soon, the choice that was always going to happen happens.
Then Lucy reconsiders.
The climactic scene features two characters exchanging monologues detailing their flaws. She’s shallow and materialistic. He’s broke and doesn’t have a plan for the future.
Oh, how would they ever make it work?
Well, there’s a wedding at the end.
Johnson, Evans, and Pascal play their parts well. Johnson is strong as the career woman who’s shut herself off from romance while trying to manufacture it for others.
Evans draws natural empathy as the salt-of-the-earth everyman chasing an impossible dream. Pascal delivers his usual understated gentleman, with a hint of passion that never quite breaks the surface.
“Materialists” is better acted and less absurdly plotted than a Hallmark Channel movie, but it invokes the same feelings and presses the same buttons for the audience. “Materialists” just plays at a classier venue.
The film confuses love and relationships. Love is the initial high when two people’s pheromones mingle in a mutually attractive way. Relationships is the series of negotiations and compromises necessary to make a partnership work.
These characters all want love, but lack the maturity for a relationship. This is why there are jobs for professional matchmakers. That “Materialists” snags onto that truth is to its credit, but that hardly redeems its otherwise ordinary story.
The movie is a little dull and a lot obvious, but not horrible. The only loathsome sections — and this is intentional — are the superficial, pathetic, and narcissistic desires for a romantic partner.
If Song meant materialism as a theme, perhaps as a barrier to love and coupling, it doesn't show in the finished product.
The characters are stock and could easily be plugged into a romantic drama.
The film lacks emotional stakes. There is no real tension between Lucy's choice between Jack and Harry.
The subplot of a tragedy befalling one of Lucy's clients, played by Zoe Winters, wants to be impactful but fails to muster any real drama.
There's nothing in the cinematography or Song's choices as a writer or director that lifts this above average.
“Materialists” checks a lot of boxes for the consumer of this sort of pap, but the creators, hoping to woo jaded eyeballs to this genre — despite the good performances — don’t make the math work in this film’s favor.
Daniel P. Finney is a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, but don’t hold that against them. Please visit their page to view a full roster of writers and consider subscribing to their columns. Writing is hard work; people ought to get paid for it. If you enjoy it, throw them a couple of bucks. They earned it.