Oct 22

Oct 22 Movie Review : Materialists (2025)

Hating the rich has become the avocado toast of pop culture: fashionable, easy to digest, and vaguely good for you. But the message has always been muddled. Is The White Lotus really mocking the self-inflicted misery of the rich or just selling us the idea that unchecked opulence inevitably leads to suffering so we don’t feel bad about never getting there ourselves?

Here’s the truth: money is kind of great. It’s hoarding money like a dragon who never leaves the cave that makes you awful. For about an hour, Celine Song’s movie Materialists looks like it might get that wealth and character aren’t automatically linked. But it’s not. This isn’t just a movie that doesn’t want you to get rich. This is a movie that doesn’t even want you to fall in love.

Materialists follows Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a hotshot New York matchmaker whose job is basically arranging sexy mergers. She lands the ultimate client: a dream guy played by Pedro Pascal, who is tall, magnetic, absurdly wealthy, and probably smells like artisanal cedar. The catch? He wants Lucy for himself. The double catch? Lucy still has unfinished business with John (Chris Evans), a failed artist turned catering waiter who radiates a miserable energy you only notice when you’re trapped at the same dinner table.

Suddenly, Lucy has a problem most people would kill for: too much good fortune.

Gaslighting As A Form of Self-Hatred

As I was saying, half of Materialists is about Dakota Johnson being hit on by Pedro Pascal and that half is great. Her character Lucy is gradually losing faith in her profession as her clients constantly sacrifice their own needs for what is essentially symbolic wealth (one of her clients refuses to date a guy who earns 175K a year because she only wants 500K and over), but then she meets a guy who’s essentially the opposite. He’s wealthy to a point of meaninglessness and seeks his meaning everywhere else. Notably in her.

That is interesting to me. A counterintuitive, but intriguing plot.

There’s a dinner scene where Lucy finally calls out Harry (Pascal) on whatever billionaire villain scheme he must be hiding, and his response is refreshingly weird. He basically argues that having obscene wealth and a functioning moral compass allows him to ignore every distraction and just chase what matters: an actual meaningful romantic relationship. Celine Song would probably frame this as him treating Lucy like the ultimate collectible, the one possession money can’t usually buy.

But that’s not how it plays. He’s not trying to purchase her affection; he’s trying to earn it the old-fashioned way. By being irresistible and loaded, but mostly irresistible. I mean, he’s Pedro Pascal. What else is he supposed to do?

Not long after, Materialists just keels over. There’s a surreal scene where Lucy gaslights both Harry and herself into believing they never loved each other, like being healthy and wealthy together couldn’t ever be a thing. Nothing up to that point suggested Harry’s wealth made him incapable of love, but suddenly that’s the moral. And then comes the plot twist I won’t spoil, mostly because it’s so dumb it loops back around to being hilarious: let’s just say it involves Harry secretly being a short king (don't ask). This revelation instantly kills Lucy’s attraction, because apparently insecurity is still a dealbreaker even when you’ve already conquered it.

The most boring route

When Lucy ditches Harry, Materialists swerves into Hallmark Channel territory, except it’s wearing designer heels and trying to order a $19 glass of Chardonnay. By rejecting her professional world, she also rejects the values that come with it, trading a perfectly decent (and, let’s not forget, obscenely wealthy) man for an emotional mess because… I don’t know, emotional and situational purity? In other words, he can’t afford to use people.

John wants what his heart wants, even if that heart has the charisma of unsalted oatmeal. Status is never really off the table (Lucy basically hands it to him just by showing up) but maybe she convinces herself it’s different this time because she feels indispensable.

As someone who’s been in the healthiest couple I know for almost nineteen years, I find this logic clinically insane. You don’t pick the partner who might dissolve into a one-man Rent revival if you leave the room. You pick the one who chooses you, not the one who requires you like Wi-Fi. Which makes me wonder why anyone would write such a self-sabotaging movie. Celine Song has been married nearly a decade, she knows what durable love looks like. Which is why half of Materialists feels like an erotic novel where no one ever shows their dick.

Materialists left me frustrated because it chickens out of its own sharp ideas, retreating from zeitgeist-skewering insight back into a reheated platter of clichés. It’s like ordering Howlin’ Rays and getting KFC instead, with the chef shrugging: “fried chicken is fried chicken.” No, it’s not. And no one, absolutely no one, gaslights themselves out of billionaire Pedro Pascal. Puppy love is nice, sure, but billionaire Pedro is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. You don’t walk away from that; you make beautiful children and build a dynasty. YOU’RE A COWARD, DAKOTA JOHNSON.