Movie review: 'Materialists' incisively takes down big dating services

UPI

2 days ago

1 of 5 | Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal star in "Materialists," in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of A24
LOS ANGELES, June 9 (UPI) -- Materialists, in theaters June 16, is a scathing indictment of both Hollywood romances and the real-life industry that has sprouted around dating. Singles who have been preyed upon by such services will feel seen.
In the film, Dakota Johnson stars as Lucy, a woman working for the fictional Adore matchmaking service. She is responsible for nine marriages but is determined to remain single herself.
At one wedding, the groom's brother, Harry (Pedro Pascal), asks Lucy on a date, which she initially accepts to try and land him as a client. At that same wedding, she reconnects with her ex, John (Chris Evans), who is working as a waiter.
Just watching Lucy work shows how she turns human beings into commodities. They are a collection of assets she can move around to set up on dates, thus keeping both clients on contract, or marry off to raise her success rate, improving her own business.
And yet, she still objectively misjudges her clients. When introducing one potential match, she genuinely thought the man would be open to a 39-year-old businesswoman and that the woman would accept his height and receding hairline, let alone other clients who have minimum salary requirements for partners.
Lucy expects her clients to be more open-minded, and yet she's selling them on the idea that their perfect match is out there, and that she'll find them. If she was realistic in her sales pitch, most clients would probably opt to keep dating on their own.
This is an issue inherent with turning dating into business. When a customer is paying for a service, they do have a right to set some criteria for their purchase. Capitalism is ultimately incompatible with humanity.
Yet matchmaking services have a high enough success rate to stay in business. Everyone seems to know someone who met their partner through a service like this.
Materialists makes incisive observations about the seemingly petty reasons people really connect. There is some validity to them, however.
One flashback shows John and Lucy arguing over whether to park at a $25 lot in New York. $25 is a significant amount for a struggling couple, so it compromises their other plans and then makes Lucy feel guilty for resenting how much hinges on the amount.
Money would render that problem moot but it wouldn't address the root of the issue -- if a couple can't solve problems together, they're not very compatible. Even if Lucy finds a wealthy suitor like Harry appealing, other problems will arise and put their relationship to the test.
So Lucy assigns people value based on their careers, their income and their looks because everyone is already doing it. She's just created a mathematical formula.
Being this honest, warts and all, about people's romantic needs also contradicts the most popular Hollywood romances. Hollywood movies love to sell people on romantic destiny, such as Sleepless in Seattle or While You Were Sleeping.
Another trope is platonic friends falling in love like in When Harry Met Sally or Reality Bites. Certainly friends can become more, but movies like that overlook the reasons the pair made a conscious decision not to start dating in the first place.
Lucy does the math on herself too, which speaks to an internalized self-loathing that matchmaking services prey upon. Based on firsthand experience, a lot of them seem to expect that if you're paying to find a date you must be desperate enough to accept whoever they present to you.
Materialists gets even more serious about the pitfalls of taking money to introduce strangers in an intimate setting. When Lucy misjudges one male client, she puts a female client in a precarious situation.
This is the inevitable peril of such a business and Adore alludes to a legal department, which must exist for real-life services to address such risks. But, Lucy's math can't even get middle-aged men to accept dating 30-year-olds, so how can she really screen out possible abusers when abusers are deceptively capable of appearing safe?
Lucy starts to see the flaws in the system and calls out some of her clients. She astutely points out that as a matchmaker, she is forced to deal with clients' racism, ageism, body shaming and other qualities to which even their therapists may not be privy.
One issue with Lucy's math is that she only sees people's potential. What it doesn't show her is people's nature, and that is the foundation of relationships.
Materialists is a cynical movie and yet one that desperately wants to have hope. The film, as with its heroine, is hard pressed to ignore the reality of human behavior.
Writer-director Celine Song seems nonjudgmental about the people who run Adore and the people who pay for their services, assuming their intentions are sincere despite their blind spots. And what is the alternative, swiping profiles on apps?
Ideally, the alternative should be being kind and friendly, spending time getting to know each other and not looking at phones. Alas, the difficulty of that created a void for businesses like Adore to fill.
Song lets her actors perform long, uncut scenes of dialogue together, or listen to each other's monologues and react subtly. The roles let Johnson and Pascal let their guard down at times, and Evans' role is always vulnerable.
Materialists is presumably a date movie but it is likelier to lead to arguments, hopefully constructive ones. For singles navigating the oppressive selling of relationship services, it is especially validating, and poignant for anyone trying to rationalize the intangibles of love.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.