{"id":5981,"date":"2025-09-07T21:05:53","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T18:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maniainc.com\/movies\/?p=5981"},"modified":"2025-09-07T22:42:01","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T19:42:01","slug":"the-materialists-movie-review-when-love-becomes-math-and-desire-gets-a-price-tag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maniainc.com\/movies\/the-materialists-movie-review-when-love-becomes-math-and-desire-gets-a-price-tag\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cMaterialists\u201d Movie Review: When Love Becomes Math, and Desire Gets a Price Tag"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a small, acidic laugh that runs under Director Celine Song\u2019s 2025 movie “Materialists<\/em>” \u2014 not a laugh at characters, exactly, but at the cultural math that makes people treat other human beings like line items. Song\u2019s second feature after Past Lives<\/em> uses the rom-com scaffolding (a love<\/a> triangle, the neat oppositions of wealth vs. art, safety vs. risk) to ask something sharper: what do we mean when we say we\u2019re \u201clooking for love,\u201d and how much of that search is literal accounting?<\/p>\n

The film centers on Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a high-functioning matchmaker whose m\u00e9tier is turning messy human histories into compatibility algorithms. She finds herself pulled between two poles \u2014 John, the broke, sweet ex (Chris Evans), and Harry, a wealthy, disarmingly polished suitor (Pedro Pascal) whose physical perfection is not as natural as it seems.<\/p>\n

\"Lucy
Lucy must face the impossible balance between someone you love and someone who you think is right for you. Source: A24.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Song folds wry social observation into intimate beats: the result is frequently astute, occasionally frustrating, and frequently alive in the chest.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s answer is pragmatic: no. Money and height can change the conditions of a relationship, but they don\u2019t do the relational work of mutual care, repair, and curiosity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Materialists Movie Review: A Tight Synopsis (spoilers ahead, but necessary)<\/h2>\n

Lucy works at Adore, a boutique matchmaking outfit that sells love as a service \u2014 heady for clients and dispassionately transactional for the company. She\u2019s good at turning people into profiles that \u201cadd up<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a wedding she reconnects with John, now doing odd jobs and acting on the side, while catching the eye of Harry, a financier who could be the \u201cunicorn\u201d in every matchmaker\u2019s ledger.<\/p>\n

\"Lucy
Lucy meets Harry at one of her matchmaking clients’ wedding. Harry is what matchmakers may term a “unicorn”, i.e. someone who has it all… but, nothing is as it seems. Source: Materialists (2025)\/A24.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Complications arrive like the best rom-com complications: an awkward sympathy for John, a magnetic pull toward Harry\u2019s stability, and a darker, quieter subplot when one of Lucy\u2019s clients, Sophie, is sexually assaulted on a date arranged through Adore. That incident cracks Lucy\u2019s professional armor and forces her to confront what duty and care really mean in a business that sells intimacy.<\/p>\n

Later, we learn Harry underwent an extreme cosmetic intervention \u2014 limb\/leg-lengthening surgery \u2014 to increase his height, a revelation that reframes his polish as both pain and performance. By the end, Song refuses an easy moralizing payoff: Lucy\u2019s choices are moral questions without tidy answers, and the film is less about a triumphant \u201cchoice<\/strong>\u201d than about how people reckon value, risk and vulnerability in an economy of desire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Related: Evading Desire: Learning How to Not Want<\/a><\/p>\n

Craft and Cinematography: How the Materialists Looks and Listens<\/h2>\n

Shabier Kirchner\u2019s cinematography is a key collaborator in making Materialists feel like an observation rather than a lecture. Framing is often tight on faces, letting micro-expressions do the emotional work; interiors \u2014 Lucy\u2019s office, Harry\u2019s penthouse, John\u2019s cramped rehearsal spaces \u2014 are lit and dressed to show contrasts between curated wealth<\/a> and lived-in messiness.<\/p>\n

Song and Kirchner favor calm, lingering coverage, allowing awkward silences to become their own punctuation. The camera will sometimes widen at a wedding reception or a party to show Lucy as a small figure processing a big, performative world. Editing by Keith Fraase paces the film toward intimacy rather than punchlines; the picture is comfortable letting scenes breathe, even if that occasionally makes the second act feel slightly diffuse.<\/p>\n

On the sound side, Daniel Pemberton\u2019s score and a handful of curated songs (including a Japanese Breakfast track) keep things contemporary without ever being intrusive. The music frames scenes the way a matchmaking memo might \u2014 crisp, explanatory and occasionally wistful \u2014 helping push the film\u2019s emotional throughlines without owning them.<\/p>\n

The mise-en-sc\u00e8ne, from the angular modernist apartments to the battered theatre wings where John rehearses, does the heavy lifting of the film\u2019s social commentary: New York isn\u2019t only a backdrop, it\u2019s part of the thesis.<\/p>\n

Related: Wealth and Happiness: Does Money Make You Happy?<\/a><\/p>\n

Character Performances: Johnson, Pascal, Evans \u2014 and the players around them<\/h2>\n

Dakota Johnson gives Lucy an exactness that\u2019s easy to mistake for coolness. Her Lucy is articulate and efficient; Johnson leans into the character\u2019s habit of abstraction (love as metrics) and then lets the cracks show. The real achievement is that Lucy is not written as a cartoon villain of #materialism<\/a> \u2014 she\u2019s a professional whose methods protect many people while failing others, and Johnson finds the moral nuance.<\/p>\n

\"John
At its essence, Materialists isn’t too concerned about the object materialism of finding love. Instead, it excels on interrogating the nuances of the materialistic tendencies of what (the personal characteristics) we perceive as summing up to a perfect match. Source: Materialists Movie\/A24.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chris Evans\u2019s John is warm and slightly ragged, believable as the kind of enduring, affectionate person whose deficits are practical rather than moral. Pedro Pascal brings a particular kind of vulnerability to Harry that complicates the \u201crich guy<\/strong>\u201d shorthand: he\u2019s both dazzling and, in a late reveal, physically scarred for having pursued social capital through surgery.<\/p>\n

Secondary performances, particularly Zo\u00eb Winters as Sophie, who is given an arc that includes trauma and resilience, anchor the film\u2019s more difficult moments.<\/p>\n

The \u201cMath\u201d Motif and What Materialists<\/em> is Actually Critiquing<\/h2>\n

One of the cleverest devices in the screenplay is how often characters talk like accountants. Lines and scenes repeatedly return to arithmetic metaphors \u2014 \u201cthe math doesn\u2019t add up<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m doing the math<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cit\u2019s just math<\/strong>\u201d \u2014 as if to remind us that romantic calculus is already baked into modern dating practice. That phrase, which Lucy and other characters repeat, operates both as a defense mechanism and a diagnosis: a way of transforming subjective desire into objective criteria, and a way of hiding from feeling.<\/p>\n

Critics have picked up on this motif as central to Song\u2019s critique: the film is less a blanket condemnation of people who value stability or specific traits, and more an interrogation of when preference hardens into commodification.<\/p>\n

But the movie refuses to settle into a single moral posture. It can be read as a critique of materialism \u2014 the world it depicts literally monetizes #romance<\/a> (matchmaking is a product for sale) and reduces people to attributes \u2014 and as a bow to lost love<\/a>: the ache for authenticity in Lucy\u2019s relationship with John is as sincere and convincing as any scene where money is glamorized.<\/p>\n

Song resists tidy allegories: money, height, and status are shown as both useful and corrosive. There\u2019s also a sustained curiosity about how desire itself is conditioned; the film invites us to ask whether we choose partners for their material edge or because some deeper compatibility has been obscured by a culture that fetishizes metrics.<\/p>\n

\"Lucy
It’s often the case, for women especially, that when finding love, one will have all these lists of characteristics they would want in a love partner, only for the rules to be torn apart by the reality that everyone is imperfect. Source: A24.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Assault Subplot: Duty, Accountability, and The Limits of \u201cVetting\u201d<\/h2>\n

Materialists forces a hard question into its plot: what responsibility do matchmakers (or apps, or friends who set people up) have for a client\u2019s safety? The film includes a scene in which Sophie, one of Lucy\u2019s clients, is assaulted on a date arranged through Adore. That sequence and the fallout are the film\u2019s moral fulcrum.<\/p>\n

Lucy\u2019s boss frames the risk as an unfortunate hazard of the dating world; Lucy experiences it as a failure of care that becomes personal and existential. The film doesn\u2019t give a legalistic how-to on liability; rather, it probes emotional accountability. Lucy\u2019s crisis is not only professional (did her agency fail to vet properly?) but also ethical: can matchmaking be practiced like a neutral service when intimacy can become dangerous?<\/p>\n

Song stages this subplot to complicate the narrative\u2019s sweetness. Rather than use it as a melodramatic turning point, she treats it as a lived moment of social failure: institutions normalize risk, and individuals \u2014 however well-meaning \u2014 must contend with the consequences. This is where the movie most clearly leaves rom-com<\/a> comfort behind and leans into social drama<\/a>. The film\u2019s questions \u2014 about vetting, power imbalances, and the difference between transactional matchmaking and relational care \u2014 are urgent precisely because they refuse a single answer.<\/p>\n

Related: Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story Series Review<\/a><\/p>\n

Harry, Leg-lengthening Surgery, and the Politics of Height<\/h2>\n

The film\u2019s startling plot choice \u2014 Harry (and, apparently, his brother) having undergone leg-lengthening surgery to increase their heights \u2014 is the element most likely to be quoted at parties and memed on the internet. The procedure is presented matter-of-factly: scars show up under swim shorts; the reveal reframes Harry\u2019s polish as achievement earned through pain.<\/p>\n

In context, Song uses the story to show that desirability is not only purchased through wealth, but sometimes painfully engineered. The inclusion of a real-world cosmetic procedure with a growing (and ethically fraught) market gives the film an edge: it\u2019s a literal embodiment of the lengths people will go to meet social standards of attractiveness.<\/p>\n

\"Lucy
Harry\u2014as much as Lucy thinks he is a “unicorn”\u2014has a secret and scars to show for it. That is to say, he has paid a high price to be such a catch on the dating scene. Source: A24.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That storyline does double duty. On one level it satirizes heightism and swipe-culture filters that reward tallness; on another it humanizes Harry, undercutting the easy opposition of \u201crich = monstrous<\/strong>\u201d by showing how even the apparently privileged can be deeply insecure. The movie\u2019s surprising generosity toward Harry complicates any simple \u201cmaterialists are bad\u201d reading: Song is as interested in the human cost of conformity as she is in condemning superficiality.<\/p>\n

Matchmaking vs. Online Dating: Can Old Models of Finding Love Survive?<\/h2>\n

Part of Materialists\u2019s pleasure is the ways it contrasts old-school matchmaking with algorithmic dating apps<\/a>. Matchmaking in the film wears an almost artisanal veneer \u2014 curated lists, human negotiation, a promise of lifetime matches \u2014 but Song quickly undercuts the romance: Adore is still a business, with quotas, branding, and a culture of risk-management.<\/p>\n

The #Materialists<\/a><\/em> movie asks whether traditional matchmaking can be humane in an age where dating is quantified. The answer the film offers is ambivalent: human judgment can account for nuance that algorithms miss, but people are fallible, biased, and prone to market logic. The film also makes clear that matchmaking is not a neutral service; it shapes desire by presenting a particular set of acceptable tradeoffs.<\/p>\n

Crucially, Song also addresses the illusions that apps create \u2014 that perfect matches are discoverable by scrolling, that attributes can be isolated and optimized \u2014 showing that both systems (the human and the algorithmic) reproduce cultural preferences about class, height, and family structure. The film implies that no matching system can escape the social norms that inform users\u2019 filters; it can only choose whether to acknowledge that fact ethically or hide it behind glossy marketing.<\/p>\n

Related: The Tinder Swindler Documentary Review and Summary<\/a><\/p>\n

Are \u201c6-foot, Rich, No Kids\u201d Dating Preferences Realistic or Inherently Materialistic?<\/h2>\n

The movie intentionally provocates a thorny social question: when people insist on metrics (6-foot, wealthy, childless, never married), are they exercising legitimate standards or being shallowly materialistic? Materialists treats the demand for specific qualities as partly practical and partly symbolic.<\/p>\n

Height and wealth are not merely attributes; they\u2019re signals of safety, status and the future. Song deftly shows that such preferences can be both rational (economic security matters in a city with crushing rents) and ideological (a desire to display success, to keep social capital untainted).<\/p>\n

\"Lucy
As understandable as it is to look for signals of safety, status, and stability in a possible love match, sometimes the person who’s easier to love is someone you can light up a cig with at the back of a restaurant. Someone you can be yourself with. Source: Materialists (2025).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From a moral standpoint, the film suggests that insisting on perfection is a defensive strategy \u2014 a way to minimize risk \u2014 but that it can also be a way of excluding complex, messy personhood. The narrative doesn\u2019t argue that tallness or wealth disqualifies someone from being loving; rather, it asks whether those factors alone are sufficient to make a relationship sustain itself. The film\u2019s answer is pragmatic: no. Money and height can change the conditions of a relationship, but they don\u2019t do the relational work of mutual care, repair, and curiosity.<\/p>\n

Song is careful not to moralize women (or men) who have preferences rooted in survival and social pressure \u2014 such as marriage pressure<\/a>. Instead, she wants the audience to notice how cultural standards<\/a> and economic realities conspire to make \u201cdeal-breakers<\/strong>\u201d seem rational \u2014 and then asks us to interrogate whether the calculus is about love or about status. That ambivalence is one of the movie\u2019s strengths.<\/p>\n

Related: Marriage Pressure: Why Women Especially Feel Heavily Pressured to Get Married<\/a><\/p>\n

Lucy\u2019s Ethical Arc: Professionalism, Guilt, and Growth<\/h2>\n

Much of the film\u2019s emotional force comes from Lucy\u2019s self-examination. Early on she\u2019s proud of her track record: nine marriages, a tidy r\u00e9sum\u00e9 of success. But the assault of Sophie tears open a question Lucy can no longer quantify away: what is the duty of a matchmaker when the product is intimate, and intimacy can be harmful?<\/strong> Her struggle is not only with legal responsibility but with empathy \u2014 she must learn to feel without using metrics as armor.<\/p>\n

Song writes Lucy as someone who can do the work of critique: she recognizes clients\u2019 unrealistic demands and tries to help them see tradeoffs, but she also benefits from the same market she critiques.<\/p>\n

\"Lucy
As much as she hates to admit its significance when finding a love partner, Lucy’s on and off relationship with John\u2014and her affair with Harry\u2014forces her to weigh love against wealth and perceived stability. Source: A24.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The film\u2019s best moments are when Lucy\u2019s defenses drop \u2014 in small, private scenes where Johnson\u2019s face does the storytelling. The arc ends not with absolution but with a modest, earned humility: Lucy is better, perhaps, at recognizing the personhood behind a profile. That\u2019s a quietly radical payoff.<\/p>\n

What Materialists<\/em> Get Wrong (And for Whom It Might Not Land)<\/h2>\n

Materialists<\/em> is far from flawless. Some viewers have complained that the film\u2019s second half loses momentum, that the marriage of social critique and intimate drama sometimes leaves both undercooked. The leg-lengthening beat risks feeling like a gimmick if you read it only as shock value; for others it functions as concrete evidence of the film\u2019s thesis about violent conformity.<\/p>\n

The assault subplot, while powerful, has provoked debate: is Song treating trauma with sufficient narrative care, or does the subplot exist primarily to catalyze Lucy\u2019s growth?<\/strong> Reasonable viewers will disagree. The film\u2019s pacing, and its refusal to give tidy moral payoffs, will make it feel unresolved to audiences who expect genre comfort.<\/p>\n

Why The Materialists (2025) Movie Matters: The Film’s Cultural Significance<\/h2>\n

There are a handful of contemporary films that try to diagnose the emotional effects of late-capitalism on intimacy; Materialists is one of the more ambitious attempts. It\u2019s not simply a morality play about rich vs. poor; it\u2019s an inquiry into the structures (economic, social, technological) that teach us to appraise human beings like assets<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

By centering a matchmaker \u2014 a profession dedicated to converting feeling into a sale \u2014 Song gives us a protagonist who literally incarnates the tension at the film\u2019s heart. The movie\u2019s courage is in probing uncomfortable questions rather than delivering comforting certainties.<\/p>\n

For viewers who want a rom-com balm, Materialists might be too cool and self-aware; for those who want a picture that acknowledges how modern dating is shaped by money, measurement and risk, it\u2019s a necessary conversation starter. Its mixture of dry humor, formal restraint and moral curiosity makes it feel like a film made by someone who trusts audiences to do some thinking in the dark.<\/p>\n

\n

Read the Latest Movie Reviews from Mania Movies:<\/p>\n