The Materialists stars Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans, and at first glance it feels like an updated Hitch for a generation that curates their romantic prospects like a dating app wish list. Johnson plays Lucy Mason, a disillusioned matchmaker who’s seen too much to still believe in fairy tale endings. She knows the modern dating pool is flooded with people chasing a fantasy…..wanting perfection while bringing very little of it to the table themselves.
Director Celine Song (Past Lives) doesn’t shy away from that cynicism—this isn’t really a rom-com. It’s more of a quiet takedown of the transactional, image-obsessed way we pursue connection today. And she leans into it hard.
Lucy eventually finds herself entangled with Harry Castillo (Pascal), a wealthy, kind, emotionally intelligent man who treats romance more like a strategic partnership than an affair of the heart. He sees her worth, maybe more than she does….and Lucy, jaded as she is, calls him what every modern single woman dreams of: a unicorn. A rich, handsome, decent man with no visible red flags.
But the film’s real point is that for all their compatibility on paper, neither Lucy nor Harry actually feels much of anything for the other. Enter John (Chris Evans), Lucy’s ex, a broke caterer with roommates and no upward trajectory. And yet…the feelings are still there. Messy, inconvenient, but real.
The film plays with that well-worn idea: love matters more than money. But it’s also smart enough to push past the cliché. Yes, love is the foundation—but try building anything lasting on it without the resources to support it, and the cracks will show. The Materialists doesn’t give easy answers; it just quietly suggests that maybe we’re all trying to find the sweet spot between passion and practicality…..and that the search itself might be the real love story.
Rating: B+
