'Materialists' A Review

Materialists is a rom-dram, the sophomore feature from Celine Song after her breakout debut Past Lives, about NYC matchmaker Lucy(Dakota Johnson) and the tension between her actual feelings towards working class John(Chris Evans) and the magnetism of wealth from Harry(Pedro Pascal). What's a girl to do?

Johnson struggles to create a believable human, part of that is she's never displayed a particularly wide range but also, as written, Lucy and more broadly the whole narrative, has little basis in reality or interest. Johnson delivers all of her lines like she's reciting a memorized monologue but to her credit, that's how a lot of the dialogue comes across, like a socio-economics paper, not subtext, all text, all this kind of shotgun-blast punishing(and dated) argument about the intertwining of marriage and capital. Evans and Pascal are both decent, both charming, but they also struggle because their characters aren't particularly believable or compelling and said characters inhabit an absurd narrative. Give them an actual honest-to-goodness romcom and that's something that'd put butts in seats. The supporting cast is small and mostly forgettable. More broadly, why would a general movie goer care about the romantic travails of terrible, racist, shallow people complaining about making a quarter of a million dollars a year.

Visually Song continues to impress, the film looks incredible, every shot like a piece of art, the colors and textures rich and evocative. The score is consistently good but inconsistent with the tone, is this a rom-com, a rom-dram, a straight up drama, or an erotic thriller? The movie is confused and so the score, at times, doesn't really make any sense.

The big issue is the script. The themes and ideas are muddled and ultimately kind of repugnant. The movie feints at playing with rom-com tropes, postures at satirizing modern dating and marriage, but ultimately the message is this dated, regressive, quite frankly disgusting embrace of this purely capitalist kind of Girl Boss/Lean In perspective i.e. you can have it all as long as you make enough money. Which is, one, simply not true(Scrooge anyone?) and two especially offensive given what's happening in the US this year/right now, the economics they are discussing are not within reach of 95% of the population.

Blatant(seemingly unknowing) propaganda for the patriarchal capitalist machine.

Currently streaming on HBO Max.

Don't See It.