Women want more rom-coms. Does 'Materialists' deliver?

Yahoo

20-06-2025

Warning: This story contains spoilers for the movie Materialists.
There should always be room for heart at the box office.
Race cars, plane stunts and giant dinosaurs make entertaining spectacles, but for devotees of the rom-com genre, nothing compares to watching a love story unfold onscreen, especially one that leaves you saying, 'To me, you are perfect.'
Hollywood has largely been filtering rom-coms into the streamer release bucket, like Renée Zellweger's Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Amy Schumer's Kinda Pregnant and Anne Hathaway's The Idea of You. In some cases, it makes sense: Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding called the franchise's fourth film 'a good movie to watch on the sofa.' However, recent history shows that when a romance-centered film is headed to the big screen, people — specifically women — will come.
Case in point: 2023's Anyone but You, the sleeper hit starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, which gave the rom-com genre a jolt. Sure, people may have bought tickets for the fauxmance, but it proved that a love story on the big screen — one that's more self-aware and less about marriage — still sells. Same with It Ends With Us, starring now-litigants Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni — women flocked to see the romantic drama even as the film's marketing faced criticism for underplaying domestic violence themes.
And now: Materialists — driven by Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans's love triangle, which examines modern relationships (for love or money?) and even delves into sexual assault — is performing above expectations at the box office.
Over its opening weekend, just behind the live-action franchises Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon and ahead of action-film franchises Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning and Ballerina is where Materialists landed at the box office.
Its success tells us that audiences are still hungry for romance, though maybe not the traditional, wrapped-in-a-bow, happily-ever-after, fairy-tale type.
Materialists is being marketed as a rom-com, but it's not like When Harry Met Sally… and Notting Hill, with a tidy arc and predictable ending. It's a romantic dramedy with social commentary about today's dating culture, exploring whether Johnson's Lucy (a professional matchmaker) should pick Pascal's Harry (the wealthy private equity broker who can more than provide for her) or Evans's John (her broke but cute waiter/aspiring actor ex). And, again, a sexual assault is a plot point, though not involving the main characters directly.
The film's original love story was the lure for filmgoers we talked to — even if some are disappointed it wasn't the escapist rom-com they expected.
Hira Mustafa tells Yahoo Entertainment that she went to see it with eight friends after 'looking forward to the release for weeks.' She was hopeful 'it would be an entertaining watch — a fun, fresh take on a romantic comedy that would likely have a meaningful message we could discuss afterwards,' but felt it lacked real substance.
'I was open to a dramedy that wasn't necessarily laugh-out-loud funny, but beyond the genre, it felt like the romance itself was underdeveloped,' she says. Plus, 'they introduced a sexual assault storyline but never fully explored its purpose or impact, which was disappointing given how serious and nuanced that topic deserves to be handled.'
As for the ending — Lucy forgoing money (Harry) for love (John) — she was disappointed. Mustafa, who panned the movie on TikTok, says it would have been better had John realized "that love isn't enough without action. So he steps up, gets a stable job, moves out and actively commits to building a balanced future with Lucy, recognizing that true partnership requires compromise."
She's not alone. Viewers have been hotly debating the film's ending and whether Lucy did herself a disservice by picking the guy with a bunch of roommates.
Moviegoer Audrey Atienza, who sees most new releases with her AMC movie subscription and shares her takes on TikTok, says films with romantic plots "definitely" get her to the theater, as this one did. She saw it with friends on a rainy New York night.
"I don't like movies that stress me out," Atienza tells Yahoo Entertainment, "and usually romantic plots are a safe bet that they won't."
Atienza said that Materialists was not "an Anyone But You-type of movie.' She found it "deep" in ways that some rom-coms historically aren't.
She was surprised to overhear other people in the theater unhappy with the ending.
'Maybe I'm just a sucker for love, but I feel like the movie demonstrated why she is a better fit for the person she chose,' Atienza says.
'Some people have called this film 'broke men propaganda,' but I think that idea overlooks a really important detail established early on,' says Alexis Oteng, host of the ChickFlicks podcast (and on TikTok @thechickflicksshow). 'In a world where so many of us just want to feel like we matter, I think Lucy comes to realize that while she struggles with the idea of a life with John meaning she might not have all the luxuries she's dreamed of (a side of herself she both hates and feels ashamed of), he still finds it so easy to love her. And that matters.'
She adds, 'The film reminds us there is immense value and rarity in having someone who can love us, even when we're showing the most shallow, insecure or vulnerable sides of ourselves."
Jamie McAleney, who reviews films on TikTok, says the marketing for the film may have clouded expectations.
"As an A24 lover and a huge fan of Celine Song's Past Lives, I knew going into this movie that it wasn't going to be the rom-com of the early 2000s that the marketing was angling toward, but I thought that choice of marketing was cheeky and cute,' says McAleney. 'I really expected others to get it, but I think it may have gone over some heads.'
She expected Materialists 'to leave a lot of room for dialogue to land and not be afraid of the silences' as well as 'to take some heavier turns, be paced slowly and be a bit more cerebral than a traditional rom-com — and that's exactly what was delivered.'
McAleney says instead of the film harkening back to old-school romantic films, it's looking ahead.
'I don't think that Materialists is trying to be a 'return to form' for the rom-com — it's sharper than that,' says McAleney. 'It's asking us to look in the mirror and confront our habits and 'wish lists' in modern dating. Song doesn't just give us romance — she gives us contradictions and social commentary. Makes us feel the love and question it at the exact same time."
Oteng said the film's marketing — 'with the vibe of classic 2000s rom-coms' — made her want to see it.
"I think out of the romance films we've seen come out in the 2020s, this one definitely rises to the top," she says. "It looks at dating and love in today's world in a way that feels both realistic and a little idealistic, that balances the two really well. I like that it uses the classic rom-com tropes we all know to pull you in, then flips them to question the ideas and expectations we've built around dating now."
Yahoo News reporter Kaitlin Reilly, who has written about Materialists, says that having loved Song's 2023 rom-dram Past Lives, she was excited for her "take on modern dating" and "what people value in romantic relationships — the 'boxes' they want their partners to check — when, at the end of the day, love isn't actually math."
Reilly says she spent an hour unpacking the film with her aunt afterward. "It really made me think," she adds.
Atienza also deconstructed the film with her friends. She felt it "had a realistic take on dating and how it can feel like a business deal." Also, "how [someone] can be perfect 'on paper' (or a 'unicorn'), but that doesn't mean they're who you're meant to be with."
Materialists is its own kind of "unicorn" — a romantic dramedy swimming against a sea of summer spectacles and sequels.
According to a Yahoo News/YouGov Survey conducted May 22-27, 2025, none of the big-budget films rolling out this summer that we polled about was a slam-dunk reason to go to the movies.
Out of Mission Impossible — The Final Reckoning, Superman, Karate Kid: Legends, M3gan 2.0, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, The Naked Gun and Freakier Friday, those surveyed were most interested in Tom Cruise's hit — but only 13% of respondents said they were most excited to see it this summer. A staggering 46% said none of those films sparked their interest.
Digging deeper into movie habits, 28% of respondents surveyed said the last time they had gone to the theater to see a movie was over five years ago.
Of those polled, 61% said if a new movie they were excited to see came out, they'd be more likely to wait and stream it, compared to the 23% who would go to see it in theaters.
With more viewing options than ever, Materialists shows that audiences are still showing up for something fresh, as they did in an even bigger way earlier this year with horror flick Sinners. But films with original concepts — meaning stories created from scratch, not based on another film/show/comic book/game/book/toy — have become less common.
"I think it's hard when creative decisions are made by committee, and it's hard when creative decisions are made by people who don't even really watch movies or know anything about them, and that tends to be what's occurring a lot," Johnson said on Hot Ones when asked about Hollywood being so risk-averse.
She continued, "When something does well, studios want to keep that going, so they remake the same things. But humans don't want that. They want fresh. They want to feel new things, experience new things, see new things."
There's excitement and unpredictability in watching stories we haven't seen before, especially ones told by new and different voices beyond Hollywood's short list of mostly male directors.
"I want original stories — full stop," McAleney says. "I want studios and production companies to take a shot on voices we don't get to hear from often and invest in emerging filmmakers.'
And from the romantic genre, 'I love a good yearn,' she adds. 'Give us more yearning, please.'
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The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,560 U.S. adults interviewed online from May 22-27, 2025. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2024 election turnout and presidential vote, party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Party identification is weighted to the estimated distribution at the time of the election (31% Democratic, 32% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov's opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.9%.