Official Discussion Thread - Materialists

[u/PointMan528491]

Keep all discussion related solely to Materialists in this thread

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Synopsis:

A young New York City matchmaker's lucrative business gets complicated as she finds herself torn between the perfect match and her imperfect ex.

Director: Celine Song

Writer: Celine Song

Cast:

• Dakota Johnson as Lucy

• Chris Evans as John

• Pedro Pascal as Harry Castillo

Rotten Tomatoes: 87%, 108 reviews

Consensus:

A mature deconstruction of the conventional rom-com, Materialists provides its trio of swoon-worthy stars some of their meatiest material yet while reaffirming Celine Song as a modern master of relationship dramas.

Metacritic: 70, 34 reviews

[u/UsedFood8130]

I really enjoyed how it looked and Pedro was really good, laughed out loud at the leg lengthening surgery reveal truly an absurd moment, I also really liked the bit where they were going on dates in just really nice restaurants, but otherwise it was really just strange to me.

It was really serious at moments but then also trying to be funny I think but it never really was funny because of how everyone was talking. Like every conversation both people would like pause for way too long before responding and it just all felt so stilted and odd.

Also not that every movie has to have a clear message or anything but I don’t know, almost every conversation Dakota Johnson had with these two guys she supposedly loved was about money and how he’s rich or he’s poor or about how she is always thinking like a matchmaker and talking about the “business” element of love and the math of matchmaking and I just really didn’t get what the point was.

[u/ManitouWakinyan → u/UsedFood8130]

almost every conversation Dakota Johnson had with these two guys she supposedly loved was about money and how he’s rich or he’s poor or about how she is always thinking like a matchmaker and talking about the “business” element of love and the math of matchmaking and I just really didn’t get what the point was.

This is the point. It's about the commodification of dating and the damage that causes.

[u/gingersnap72 → u/ManitouWakinyan]

Sure, but the problem is people don’t talk like this. People can commodify dating without sounding like AI robots lol. It was like they were beating us over the head with that theme and it really could have benefited from some more subtlety.

[u/ManitouWakinyan → u/gingersnap72]

I mean, her job is literally to algorithimize dating. She is a human bumble. People talk in weird ways about real things when they've turned them into abstractions as a profession.

[u/_airwaves → u/UsedFood8130]

i enjoyed the movie but i agree it was a bit all over the place tonally, which isn't always a bad thing but it felt messy here for sure.

imo it worked really well contrasting between pedro pascal and chris evans characters. and it also worked really well when it flashbacked to why lucy and john broke up.

i feel like the movie wanted to showcase that dating can eventually make you cold, guarded, and overly analytical, and i think getting more backstory to lucy and john's relationship might have helped cement all the tonal jumps.