Materialists review: you should say yes to watching Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal’s new romance movie

After one of the best directorial debuts in recent memory with Past Lives, what does writer/director Celine Song have up her sleeves for her second movie, Materialists? How about a sophisticated take down on modern dating that also doubles as a sincere rallying cry for the value of love in our lives that will win you over with its charm.

Materialists centers on Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a professional matchmaker in New York City. She sees relationships as a numbers game/business — what traits are non-negotiables and how many boxes does someone check off for one of her clients. One day, she meets Harry (Pedro Pascal), a unicorn — the type of partner that has the whole package just about everyone would want, including Lucy. The two start to date, but the picture gets a little complicated when Lucy’s ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans) pops back up in her life.

You can guess what happens from there — a love triangle where Lucy must pick which guy she thinks would be the better potential partner to spend the rest of her life with. However, where Materialists succeeds is that its romantic rivalry isn’t easy to call. Neither Pascal’s Harry or Evan’s John are unlikeable characters; they both truly seem to care for Lucy. The question then is what is more important to Lucy, the fact that someone like Harry is a perfect match, or the natural connection she has with John?

Helping the love triangle are the great performances by Pascal and Evans. Two of pop culture’s biggest crushes, Materialists is only going to solidify their appeal. Pascal plays Harry suave but sincere; he’s calculating, but a reveal later on shows why, in a scene Pascal plays well. Evans’ John, meanwhile, is a mess, but the actor gives John an affable quality; he also nails a pivotal scene that could become quotable among romance fans for years to come.

The weak link in the triangle is Johnson, but I’m having a hard time figuring out if it’s her performance or a rare weakness in Song’s script. Johnson plays Lucy a bit flat and detached for a lot of the movie, though there are moments where she adds a spark of sincerity to the character. However, Lucy’s character is meant to be cold and calculating — she literally describes herself that way at times. Did Johnson play that aspect of her character too much or did Song not give us enough of Lucy outside of her relationships/work to really get to know her? It’s one of the few elements of the movie that isn't firing on all cylinders.

What makes it more complex is that the calculations that these characters are doing is part of what makes the movie work. Lucy treats relationships like a business deal, to the extent that one of the best scenes of the movie features Lucy and Harry discussing why they like each other in terms of material assets that can be traded on the stock market. That may sound cold and unnaturalistic but, in addition to the demands that Lucy’s clients give her in cutaway scenes throughout the movie, is it all that different from the dating app culture, where people make decisions to swipe right or left based on things like height?

Yet, while we can see the connections to our own lives, setting the movie amongst the elite society of six-figure earners that could afford such personalized matchmaking services gives the movie a distance that makes it feel like a fairytale for the adult crowd.

While Materialists definitely has more of a Hollywood feel to it than Past Lives, Song is still able to portray mature, honest feelings about love and relationships that make it stand out from contemporary Hollywood romances. So while it may not check every box, Materialists is a movie worth falling for.

Materialists is playing exclusively in movie theaters starting June 13 in the US; it premieres on August 15 in the UK.