‘Materialists’ — Review
In the modern climate of dating apps and filtering preferences, Materialists (2025) explores the ongoing battle against dying alone despite the increasing social problem of reducing people to statistics: age, height, salary, educational background, and more - factors that may influence desirability but ultimately have no bearing on romantic compatibility. This film further frames the ultimate goal of modern courtship as not just marriage, but marriage rooted in authentic love.
I never thought of marriage as my goal, until I met the one person who made me want to get married. I was 23, he was 22, and we started talking on Twitter (a very pandemic-era sentiment). He didn’t really have any pictures of himself so when I started to develop a crush on an almost faceless account, I was a little worried. But he had me laughing for six weeks straight. Blushing, twirling my hair, kicking my feet, the whole nine yards. When we did finally meet, I lucked out with the fact that he was handsome (and 6’4), but the truth is, I was already smitten, so it probably wouldn’t have mattered much if he wasn’t.
Back then, the only things we could offer each other were time and affection. The world was still shut down and both of us worked temporary jobs that made no real money. So we made plans. Lots and lots of plans. Some of them came true: moving to the same city, renting an apartment together, cooking meals for another, trading off on family holidays. Even in our worst moments, he made me feel safe, accepted, wanted. I did my best to make him feel considered and cared for. There’s no denying that we were truly in love. But life caught up to us eventually, as it does in this film.
Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a professional matchmaker, mid-30s, living in a gorgeous one-bedroom in New York City while making 80K a year before taxes. The main conflict for our protagonist is set up fairly early: Harry (Pedro Pascal) is insanely handsome, uber wealthy, and in pursuit of Lucy, although she can’t understand why. John (Chris Evans) is also very handsome, but he’s a broke actor living with multiple roommates and catering in between gigs. He is Lucy’s ex-boyfriend of 5 years, having dated primarily in their 20s. Harry could easily take care of Lucy, and though she enjoys his lifestyle, their companionship lacks chemistry where she undeniably loves John, even after all this time.
As a currently single 28-year-old far too familiar with the dating app scene and living in a city full of famously not-wicked-tall men, I understand the point this movie is trying to make. Love is all you really need! Fundamentally, I do agree with this. People are more than what you can summarize on a profile or list in an interview with a matchmaker. However, I think it is a gross oversimplification. There’s a lot that stems from love that is required for a relationship to be a success.
Thinking back to the flashback fight scene where Lucy and John break up on their five year anniversary in the middle of the street, the movie wants you to believe that this fight is rooted in money struggles. They are both stressed out, desperately looking for parking - cheaper parking - while about to miss a reservation at an expensive restaurant, therefore eating the deposit as well. Lucy is annoyed they didn’t just call a car in the first place, John is dismissive of Lucy’s willingness to drop money on things he deems less important. It is far too easy to call Lucy a shallow materialist who solely cares about expensive meals and little luxuries. But the truth is, if John’s income was the problem, she wouldn’t have hung around 5 years to then end things due to his tax bracket.
He was late. Lucy had reminded him of the reservation, and the deposit, multiple times. It wasn’t important enough for him to remember. Yes, he was coming from work but it is a very man-in-his-20s thing to believe you have to sacrifice the work/life balance for your boss. I’ve worked in restaurants and I’ve worked in offices - if it matters enough there’s always a way to get out when you need to. Then not only is he late, he’s stubborn. He is so focused on his ego, he won’t shell out for parking or rides and he won’t let Lucy pay for it either. All she wanted was a nice dinner celebrating them, and he was too caught up in the dollars to make sense of it. I could be more forgiving if this was a newer relationship, but 5 years… either you’re a team or you aren’t.
That’s the problem with partnership at the crux of your own becoming: you get busy trying to grow into the person you want to be, you forget someone is growing next you. My relationship, although saturated with a few more complex conflicts, followed a similar path. I’ve never been fond of stillness, and we felt frozen - in the same arguments, in past and present hurt, in too many delayed dates for a distant “some day.” The love was frozen too. Still, us growing at different rates in separate directions left gaps only resentment could fill. Similarly, John was not where he wanted to be in his career, and it affected his ability to love Lucy fully. Lucy felt that her love should conquer John’s insecurity and the fact that it couldn’t, forced her to walk away.
I left the theater wondering if the big love really can linger long enough to revisit when we’ve grown enough to meet back where we left off. I don’t think I have enough years under my belt to make up my mind on that. Lucy and John felt inevitable, which makes sense when marriage was her goal and love a required stipulation. My only problem with the plot is there didn’t seem to be any change within either of them, except maybe vaguely in mindset. But nothing externally, at least not until the very last scene, where John brings Lucy flowers and makes an engagement ring out of the stem. He’s finally giving her what she really wanted from him: time and affection. The money never mattered!
That being said, if marriage was the end goal for me, I could have it. I don’t mean that arrogantly, just that it isn’t hard to find if a ring is the only thing that matters. We see Lucy’s female clients constantly adjust their expectations because of how bad they want it. I think it’s important to note that Lucy’s male clients, mid-40s men who want skinny 25-year-olds, are never shown adjusting their parameters but it’s true that marriage primarily benefits men overall. So, it is simply not the end all and be all for me. Building community is. And if love is born out of that, I could only be honored to have it again.
When we want something to work so badly, we can tune out our intuition. But the truth is, at least for me, I always know. I know exactly who I want to be around, spend my time with, foster relationships with. But it takes an in person meeting. I knew as soon as I met my ex-boyfriend, I’ve known on every first date I’ve ever been on if this is someone I could fall in love with. That doesn’t mean that I will or that they’ll reciprocate, but it is never a slow burn for me. It’s all at once in a beach parking lot pouring peach vodka into red bull cans. It’s sitting on the floor of a dorm room at a college I don’t go to with someone who makes my smile twitch because I’m nervously anticipating their kiss. It might even be over a cup of tea I never usually drink at a dim sum place because I need something to do with my hands when it’s too early to hold theirs. But for any of them to develop, it takes the same recipe. Time. Affection. Repeat.
Of course, there is always risk in matters of the heart, some more serious than others. There is an incredibly compelling subplot where one of Lucy’s clients goes on a date with a man who assaults her. She is coming off a bad run of failed first dates that can’t seem to result in a match, and this event, understandably, causes her to internalize feelings of worthlessness. It also makes her turn on Lucy, believing that Lucy thinks of her as unworthy of love too. Her experience exemplifies very real physical and emotional danger in dating, along with the mental pitfalls we can get trapped in when we haven’t found The One. She eventually overcomes and tries again, with more hope and strength than before. I do believe that we should not let the worst things that have happened to us make us afraid of strangers, or the possibility of them becoming more. Isolation keeps us from community, so I appreciate this acknowledgement and its resolution from the film.
Materialists may have had me briefly considering rekindling with all my exes, but more than anything, it reinforced my philosophy: explore new connections. Dating apps are probably never going away but we can adjust our mindset around them. Meet people early (and publicly). Test the waters with conversation. Have a phone call. Don’t let the game make you hard, when the sweetness of it all comes from being soft. Also, talk to one another when you’re out, at a bar, at a museum, at a park. Be kind, be respectful, expect nothing and be grateful for everything.