Released in theaters on June 13, 2025, Materialists is the second feature from Celine Song, the writer-director of the acclaimed Past Lives. This romantic dramedy stars Dakota Johnson as Lucy, a sharp-witted matchmaker navigating the transactional world of elite dating in New York City. She finds herself caught between two very different men: her wealthy new suitor Harry (played by Pedro Pascal) and her struggling-actor ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans), reigniting questions about what really matters in love—connection or comfort, romance or resources. Produced by A24 and written by Song herself, this 2025 movie unpacks modern relationships with tenderness, bite, and a sense of realism that elevates it above your standard romantic comedy. In this Materialists movie review, we dive into a film that flirts with fantasy, but ultimately roots its drama in reality.
Genre:Comedy, Romance
A Love Triangle with Teeth
The Setup – Matchmaker Meets Her Match
Lucy is a woman who’s built a successful career helping other people find love—on very specific terms. As the top matchmaker at an elite firm called Adore, she filters through potential couples like a human algorithm, matching based on checklists of height, income, education, and aesthetic appeal. She has no illusions about romance. To Lucy, love is a business transaction. Marriage, she insists, is and always has been a strategic alliance.
But her world starts to tilt at a wedding she helped organize. There, she meets Harry Castillo (Pascal), the brother of the groom and a “unicorn” in dating terms: charming, rich, respectful. Harry is clearly interested in Lucy—but she's hesitant, not because he doesn’t meet her criteria, but because he does. Then enters John (Evans), Lucy’s ex, who’s catering the wedding while still chasing his dream of being a stage actor. Their chemistry is immediate, unresolved, and deeply real.
This triangle—between wealth and emotional history, fantasy and vulnerability—is the film’s beating heart.
Dakota Johnson Grounds a Complicated Character
Lucy, Between Aspirations and Affection
Johnson delivers one of her strongest performances to date as Lucy, a woman who uses precision, wit, and appearance to shield herself from emotional risk. She plays Lucy not as a gold digger, but as someone who learned—perhaps painfully—that love doesn’t pay rent, and vulnerability comes with a cost.
It’s a nuanced portrayal that allows space for contradiction: Lucy is both jaded and hopeful, confident and quietly insecure. Whether she’s conducting client interviews with cool detachment or having her worldview rattled by a late-night heart-to-heart, Johnson makes Lucy relatable, flawed, and fully human.
Pedro Pascal vs. Chris Evans – The Ideal and the Real
Two Sides of Modern Masculinity
Pedro Pascal embodies Harry with effortless charm. He’s the dream—intelligent, attentive, endlessly kind, and very, very rich. He shares Lucy’s worldview about love and lifestyle. Their dates are out of a luxury lifestyle ad: penthouses, private chefs, and exotic trips. But as the film wisely reveals, even unicorns come with vulnerabilities. Pascal plays Harry with depth, never letting the perfection feel too perfect.
Chris Evans, meanwhile, brings surprising gravitas to John. He’s not just the scrappy ex-boyfriend—he’s a man still wounded by their past, still in love, and still fighting for a dream that hasn’t quite worked out. Evans brings a wounded tenderness to the role, undercutting his usual confident presence with moments of silence, reflection, and longing. When John looks at Lucy, the weight of their shared history is clear, and Evans delivers some of the most quietly powerful moments of the film.
This isn’t a movie about choosing between “good” and “bad” men. It’s about choosing between different futures—and the truths those futures demand you face.
Matchmaking in the Material World
A Profession That Reflects a Culture
Lucy’s job is more than a plot device—it’s a lens through which the film examines our culture’s obsession with compatibility as commerce. In between weddings and breakups, Materialists reveals the modern dating marketplace in all its brutal honesty: clients who want a partner with a six-figure salary and no visible body fat, women who are told they’re too old at 30, and the painful realization that being loved doesn’t always mean being seen.
One particularly wrenching subplot involves Lucy’s client Sophie (Zoë Winters), whose date turns violent. The event becomes a turning point—not just in Lucy’s career, but in her sense of moral responsibility. The incident adds a darker undercurrent to the film and forces Lucy to reckon with the human cost of reducing love to numbers.
Celine Song’s Smart Direction
Poetic, Honest, and Sharply Observed
Celine Song sidesteps rom-com clichés by building a story that’s romantic without being sentimental, and funny without being trivial. Her script is filled with dialogue that’s crisp, introspective, and often painfully revealing. There are no villains here—only people trying their best to make sense of what they want and how they’ve been hurt.
Visually, the film is restrained but elegant. Cinematographer Shabier Kirchner bathes the city in soft light, contrasting Lucy’s sleek, curated spaces with the messier, lived-in apartments of her past. Daniel Pemberton’s score dances between melancholy and hope, underscoring the emotional fragility of these characters. Everything feels carefully calibrated but never artificial.
A Romance for Realists
Love or Money? Why Not Both?
What Materialists does best is refuse easy answers. Lucy’s dilemma isn’t whether she wants love or money—it’s whether she can trust love without the financial safety net she’s worked so hard to build. The tension isn’t in “who will she pick?” but rather in “what will she allow herself to believe?”
And that’s what makes the movie linger. It’s not about wedding dresses or grand gestures. It’s about people who have been burned before, trying to figure out how not to get burned again.
Final Verdict – Rich in Emotion, Grounded in Truth
Materialists (2025) is that rare romantic drama that manages to be both swoon-worthy and soul-searching. It flirts with familiar genre beats—a love triangle, a career-driven heroine, high-society glamour—but filters them through a lens of introspection and emotional honesty. Anchored by stellar performances from Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal, and guided by Celine Song’s perceptive writing and direction, this 2025 film is a standout in a genre that often gets dismissed.
Whether you're a hopeless romantic or a wary realist, Materialists speaks to the messy contradictions of modern love. And it does so with intelligence, empathy, and style.
Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)