{"id":12088,"date":"2025-06-13T21:29:48","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T01:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=12088"},"modified":"2025-07-26T13:31:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T17:31:00","slug":"materialists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/06\/13\/materialists\/","title":{"rendered":"Materialists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Materialists<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A24\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 117 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, brief sexual material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Celine Song\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Celine Song\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Daniel Pemberton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Shabier Kirchner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 13, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Zoe Winters, Marin Ireland, Dasha Nekrasova, Emmy Wheeler, Louisa Jacobson, Eddie Cahill, Sawyer Spielberg, Joseph Lee, Nedra Marie Taylor, Sietzka Rose, Halley Feiffer.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Let\u2019s get one thing straight. Although billed as a rom-com, Materialists<\/strong> is really more of a drama. Sure, it has moments of humor, but it\u2019s not one those light, fluffy deals that make for a good date movie. Writer-director Celine Song (Past Lives) has more on her mind than some girl finding Mr. Right. She takes a good hard look at the modern dating scene. It\u2019s not always pretty and it\u2019s never not complicated.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Materialists<\/strong> stars two Marvel heroes and one Star Wars hero. Dakota Johnson (Madame Web) plays Lucy, a professional matchmaker credited with nine marriages. She\u2019s currently single and not really in the market for a relationship. That changes when she meets Harry (Pascal, The Mandalorian) at the wedding of her latest successful match. He checks all the boxes. He\u2019s tall, handsome and very wealthy. She\u2019s skeptical. She can\u2019t understand why a \u201cunicorn\u201d like Harry would be interested in somebody like her. He assures her his interest in legit.<\/p>\n

\u00a0At the same wedding, she bumps into her ex-boyfriend John (Evans, Captain America), a struggling actor working for a catering company. Not much has changed since she last saw him. He still drives the same old car, still shares the same apartment with annoying roommates and still has no money. Him being broke is the reason they broke up in the first place. He still loves Lucy, of course. She doesn\u2019t know which guy to choose. They\u2019re both good guys and they both love her. What\u2019s a single New York girl to do in this case? Should she marry for love or money?<\/p>\n

\u00a0So let me start off by commenting on what Materialists<\/strong> might have been had it been made in the 90s or 00s. I envision it as a weightless rom-com starring either Julia Roberts or Renee Zellweger. The male leads could have been, oh I don\u2019t know, Matthew McConaughey and Richard Gere. I see an eccentric best friend played by Janeane Garofalo. There would likely be a series of funny misunderstandings, mix-ups and mishaps as the female lead navigates her way along the twisted road to love. It would be nothing like the Materialists<\/strong> I saw earlier today. It\u2019s more like a follow-up to Reality Bites featuring characters in their mid-to-late 30s concerned about finding a partner that can fulfill their needs. If love happens, so be it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Now let me tell you what I was thinking while watching Materialists<\/strong>. Thank God I\u2019m married. I didn\u2019t like the dating scene when I was single (up until 2005) and I like it even less now with all the swipe left\/swipe right apps aimed at singles looking for love or hook-ups. I will admit to placing a personal ad in one of the city\u2019s free newspapers. It ran for several months. I received less than five responses and only two resulted in dates, neither of which resulted in a relationship. I never even considered signing up for computerized dating or elitist matchmaking services. Most of them are a scam anyway. Lucy works for an outfit called Adore. She sees relationships in terms of math. She looks at the data and makes matches based on it. Never mind the whole human aspect of it. She herself says she\u2019ll only marry for money if she even marries at all. Predictably, this is a woman due for an attitude change.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For me, the most interesting part of Materialists<\/strong> is how it examines dating in the social media age. I said earlier it isn\u2019t pretty and here\u2019s why. Further cementing my assertion that there\u2019s no com to go with the rom, there\u2019s a subplot about a client of Lucy\u2019s being sexually assaulted by a guy she matched her with. Obviously, there\u2019s nothing funny about sexual assault. It affects Lucy in that she starts to question her career choice. She feels responsible for what happened. The client Sophie (Winters, Succession) blames her for it. It\u2019s a shockingly serious turn for a movie that\u2019s supposed to be a \u201ccomedy\u201d. I didn\u2019t expect this level of realism.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The love triangle element of Materialists<\/strong> isn\u2019t anything new. We\u2019ve seen it before. One woman, two guys, she has to choose. Johnson does a pretty good job as Lucy, a career woman confident in her abilities to make good matches but she\u2019s a mess when it comes to her own dating life. She doesn\u2019t know what she wants and wants it all at the same time. She\u2019s confused which I guess is an accurate depiction of single women in their late 30s. I\u2019ll give Dakota this; she\u2019s come a long way since Fifty Shades. Evans proves he can act beyond the MCU. His character lives like he\u2019s still in his 20s while still holding on to his dream of being a stage actor. Pascal is also good as the more stable choice, a grown-up with a steady job, a nice apartment and money. He loves Lucy, but is he the right man for her?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Materialists<\/strong> is a movie for adults. None of the characters are younger than 35. It\u2019s not a bedroom farce. There is no silly slapstick. It\u2019s more serious-minded than that. In just her second film, Song shows she\u2019s a filmmaking force to be reckoned with. Who else has the nerve to make a rom-com that\u2019s not really a rom-com? It has some pacing issues to be sure, but it\u2019s one of the more interesting movies I\u2019ve seen in a while. This is the one to see if you\u2019ve had your fill of non-heroic superheroes, cute little aliens and chicken jockeys.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Materialists (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A24\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 117 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, brief sexual material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Celine Song\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Celine Song\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Daniel Pemberton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Shabier Kirchner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 13, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Zoe Winters, Marin Ireland, Dasha Nekrasova, Emmy Wheeler, Louisa Jacobson, Eddie Cahill, Sawyer Spielberg, Joseph Lee, Nedra Marie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12095,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Materialists-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C965&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12088"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12097,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12088\/revisions\/12097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}