Materialists (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
Jun 12
3 min read

Updated: Jun 13

MATERIALISTS (2025)

Starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Zoë Winters, Marin Ireland, Dasha Nekrasova, Louisa Jacobson, Sawyer Spielberg, Eddie Cahill, Joseph Lee, John Magaro, Emmy Wheeler, Nedra Marie Taylor, Sietzka Rose, Halley Feiffer, Madeline Wise, Ian Stuart, Dan Domenech, Emiliano Díez, Rachel Zeiger-Haag, Alison Bartlett, Lindsey Broad and Baby Rose.

Screenplay by Celine Song.

Directed by Celine Song.

Distributed by A24. 109 minutes. Rated PG.

To paraphrase an old Neil Simon joke: The only thing worse than a hopeless romantic is a hopeful one.

Well Lucy (Dakota Johnson), the main character in Materialists, is both hopeful and hopeless, and at different times she is completely romantic and totally non-romantic.

Lucy works in New York and is extremely successful as a matchmaker. When I hear the term matchmaker, I tend to think of elderly Yiddish yentas, but apparently in this version of New York, matchmaking is a very cutting edge and profitable industry. Which is surprising because in modern New York, you can meet someone with a swipe of your phone.

Honestly, this company seems like a high-stakes computer dating service.

I suppose these matchmaking services are supposed to be a backlash on the Tinders of the world – when you’re tired of the booty calls and want to settle down with a rich, handsome, thirty-something guy, who you gonna call?

Of course, the matches made by the service – and specifically Lucy – are not at all romantic.

To Lucy, love is all mathematics, the ability to check the boxes between two singles and hope they click. Even though she is constantly talking with and consoling (or celebrating with) her clients, she doesn’t really seem to know them other than on the most superficial terms. And she also sometimes seems to be willing to overlook potential serious character flaws in search of true love – and a commission.

Lucy is in love with the idea of love in theory, but she is self-aware enough to realize that money matters in a relationship, possibly more than looks, or connection, or even the basic goodness of a person.

This film, while fun and ultimately a sweet rom com, whiplashes back and forth between romanticism and cynicism, which I guess is sort of like life.

And, of course, just when Lucy has turned love into a science which she works on others, but has no plans to try for love herself, two extraordinarily handsome and sweet men pop into her life.

One of them was already there, sort of. John (Chris Evans) was her ex-boyfriend, a struggling, aspiring actor who supplements his income with catering waiter gigs and lives in a run-down apartment with two roommates. (We see a flashback of about 10 years earlier when Lucy eventually breaks up with John and breaks his heart, because she is tired of having to be so poor.)

They meet again when he is catering at a wedding that she is attending. Although he still seems to be carrying a torch for her, she keeps him at arm’s length, because, as he acknowledges, being involved with him would be a terrible financial decision.

The other guy is Harry (Pedro Pascal), the brother of the groom at the big wedding. Lucy starts to follow him around, trying to groom him to become a client, but Harry only has eyes for her. She resists, but he’s super rich, handsome, smart, funny, and self-aware. So, eventually, Lucy decides to give love a try, because… well, he ticks a lot of her boxes. In fact, he’s the perfect man, until he’s not. (As I said before, Materialists sometimes kind of whiplashes between romance and cynicism.)

You kind of know who Lucy will end up with from the very beginning, but that doesn’t mean that Materialists isn’t an interesting and fun ride.

Jay S. Jacobs