Materialists Review
Materialists (2025) Film Review, a movie written and directed by Celine Song and starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Zoe Winters, Marin Ireland, Dasha Nekrasova, Emmy Wheeler, Louisa Jacobson, Eddie Cahill, Sawyer Spielberg, Joseph Lee, John Magaro, Nedra Marie Taylor, Sietzka Rose, Halley Feiffer, Madeline Wise, Ian Stuart and Dan Domenech.
Celine Song continues her remarkable film-making career with her follow-up to the phenomenal Past Lives, a romantic dramedy titled Materialists. This film is commandeered by a career-best performance from Dakota Johnson, a New York City-based matchmaker who comes to a crossroads in her life due to the events that transpire over the course of this brilliantly conceived and realistic love story. In the film, Johnson plays Lucy who does everything she can for her clients to connect with suitable matches. She’s single when we first meet her, yet she’s close to securing about 9 marriages for her seemingly profitable company.
Lucy tries to make her clients happy, but one of the women she seeks to help, Sophie (a wonderful Zoe Winters), has just come off a date with a balding guy who doesn’t want to see her anymore. Lucy promises Sophie she’ll find her a match in due time. As Lucy sits at the singles table at a wedding which is her most recent success, she meets the groom’s rich and handsome brother, Harry (Pedro Pascal) who moves his seat next to Lucy’s to connect with her. She wants to recruit him as a client for the agency, but Harry would like to start seeing none other than Lucy herself (in other words, he wants to date her, nobody else). Harry takes Lucy to nice restaurants and he seems like the perfect eligible bachelor complete with a $12 million apartment.
Things are sort of complicated for Lucy because Lucy’s ex, John (Chris Evans, never better), a waiter, pops up working at the event that she is attending. John offers to drive Lucy home, but she takes Harry up on his offer to dance with her which frustrates John. Still, John drives Lucy home and we learn that they have had a relationship in the past where money problems were a key barrier to them fulfilling romantic bliss together. Lucy gets serious with Harry as the plot progresses and, eventually, must decide if the rich Harry is just what she needs in this ever-changing materialistic world.
When Sophie gets assaulted on a date and sues the matchmaking company, the plot thickens as Lucy is given an involuntary vacation from her job. Lucy may just get to work out her romantic issues before returning to her challenging and immensely frustrating (at times) position. This movie expertly shows the matchmaking world almost in the same fashion as Wall Street showed the realities of the stock market. People are marketed like possessions to obtain with qualities such as good looks and a big checkbook key indicators of whether or not they will work for another person as a romantic match. Celine Song does a great job displaying these sequences with terrific authenticity and it’s believable that Lucy, who makes $80K a year, may find herself unworthy of Harry’s affections.
Without giving away key plot developments, Materialists shifts focus (pretty equally) to both the bond between Lucy and Harry and the one between Lucy and John. There are several good reasons either man could make a suitable match for Lucy, but which one will she choose, if either? Luckily, Song offers no easy answers to the complicated story line at her helm here. All the conversations that occur in the film have a natural flow to them and arguments are presented for and against both potential partnerships.
Dakota Johnson makes this role her own and commands the viewer’s respect right from the word, “go.” She not only becomes Lucy, but she gives Lucy distinct characteristics that make her human and flawed simultaneously. As her one-time boyfriend who lives in an apartment with a couple of roommates, Evans gives his most nuanced performance to date. Evans and Johnson have a nice on-screen rapport that make them appealing despite the flaws each of their characters possess. In the less showy role, Pascal more than holds his own beside them. Pascal gives his character complexity and the viewer will wonder why Harry has stayed single for so long. One of the suggestions will certainly surprise you when a key plot detail is revealed.
In a category all her own is the incomparable Zoe Winters who takes the role of Sophie and runs with it, ultimately scoring a victorious acting touchdown. Winters is forceful, vulnerable and passionate in her scenes despite her character’s lack of confidence. Although it’s only June, it would be nice to see an Oscar nomination next year for Winters who plays her role in a sophisticated and delicate manner. Winters has some fine scenes with Johnson and it’s easy to say both actresses collide and chew scenery as Winters occasionally outshines Johnson in her several brief scenes in the picture.
Johnson is still a national treasure and her work in this movie is the reason why. Lucy is super vulnerable, but puts up a hard exterior that John tries to get her to take down. Evans and Pascal play their roles so well that the movie goes back and forth like a boomerang swinging as we wonder who Lucy will ultimately ride off into the sunset with. Song gives us some difficult answers, but sometimes the harder decision is the one which will make us the happiest in life.
Materialists is, alas, a smart, timely, funny and super sophisticated movie. Song proves she’s not a flash in the pan with this incredible follow-up to the brilliant Past Lives. For me, no other movie this year has made me think as hard about the realities of love and dating as this new picture. This picture even opens by showing a pair of cave people in love to show how we’ve evolved as a society from a dating (or romantic) standpoint. Johnson is fabulous and Evans and Pascal prove to be formidable candidates for Lucy’s affections. Winters offers stellar support in a part I’d like to see, again, recognized with a nomination for Best Supporting Actress next year at the Oscars.
If some people feel Song’s Materialists takes the easy way out of the dilemma Lucy faces at the end, those folks would be dead wrong. Lucy takes the hard way out by confessing her soul mate is the man she may have least expected it to be. Take your pick who you think Lucy will end up with, but the beauty of Materialists is that Lucy’s decisions are so well thought-out and explained that you couldn’t allow her decision to believably turn out any other way. This is a fantastic film which will maintain and solidify Song’s golden reputation in Hollywood.
Rating: 9.5/10
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