Movie Review – Materialists
Director: Celine Song
Starring: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal
Year: 2025
Past Lives was one of my favorite movies of 2023. Celine Song directing her own script about love and timing and the lives we don’t live. Quiet. Devastating. The kind of movie that sits with you.
Materialists is. Different. Less quiet. More obviously a comedy. But that same intelligence is there. That same attention to how people actually talk to each other. That same willingness to let scenes breathe.
Dakota Johnson plays a matchmaker. A high-end one. She finds partners for wealthy New Yorkers who are too busy or too damaged to find partners themselves. It’s a job that requires her to understand love while keeping herself at a professional distance from it. You can already see where this is going.
Chris Evans plays a client. A finance guy who’s superficially charming and slowly revealed to be more complicated than that. Pedro Pascal plays. Someone from her past. I’m being vague because the structure of the movie depends on you not knowing exactly how these pieces fit.
What I can say is that Song is interested in transactional relationships. What happens when love gets professionalized. When matching algorithms replace chance meetings. When people approach partnership with the same optimization mindset they bring to career advancement. It’s funny and also kind of terrifying.
Johnson is excellent. I know. I was surprised too. After the Madame Web thing I had low expectations but she’s genuinely good here. Funny. Guarded. Letting the cracks show at exactly the right moments. Song knows how to direct actors toward naturalism and Johnson responds to that.
Evans is doing something against type. Captain America he is not. This guy is slick and a little sad and covering both with constant motion. There’s a scene late in the film where he stops performing and the stillness is almost shocking.
Pascal doesn’t get as much screen time as the marketing suggests but what he has is crucial. He grounds the film in something real.
The movie is about thirty minutes too long. Some scenes meander. A subplot involving one of Johnson’s other clients doesn’t land. And the ending is maybe too tidy for what comes before.
But Celine Song remains a filmmaker to watch. Past Lives wasn’t a fluke. She has something to say about how modern people try and fail to connect. I’ll see whatever she makes next.
My rating: ★★★★☆
