The Stream: The script repetitively states its tedious and didactic theme.

The Big Screen: The cast is very good-looking.

The Final Bill: This romantic comedy lacks the basic building blocks of the genre – romance and comedy.

– Trip Fontaine
Director: Celine Song
Writers: Celine Song
Stars: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Zoe Winters, Marin Ireland
Genre: Comedy, Romance, Drama
Rating: R for language and brief sexual material
Runtime: 1 hour 50 minutes
Production Companies: A24, 2AM, Killer Films, Access Entertainment, IPR.VC
Platform: In theaters June 13, 2025
Notable Trailers: The Roses, F1, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, Sorry Baby, Eddington

Hey, Streamers! While June is the favored month for weddings, one first needs to find a suitable partner to go with to the altar. Relationships are complicated, and dating is a nightmare in these times. This weekend’s new release, Materialists, is a romantic comedy that purports to focus on those questions about marriage and relationships in modern times. In Materialists, Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a successful matchmaker for a high-end firm in New York City. When Lucy attends the wedding of a former client, she meets an eligible bachelor (Pedro Pascal), who checks all of the boxes for an ideal partner, while also running into her old flame (Chris Evans), who is a broke, aspiring theater actor. Lucy has to determine whether love can truly come from a partner who checks all the boxes or is there something more. Love triangle hijinks ensue.

Celine Song was celebrated for her romantic drama, Past Lives (2023), which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture and featured a love triangle in New York City. Song returns to familiar territory in the Materialists by exploring another New York City-based love triangle. Unfortunately, Materialists does not have the narrative or emotional weight that sustained Past Lives. If this movie is supposed to be a romantic comedy as it has been advertised, it sorely is lacking in both the comedy and romance necessary to fulfill the genre. Song’s screenplay has very few moments of humor, and most of them are pretty strained. There is one laugh out loud moment that has nothing to do with the central story and it feels imported from another movie. Further, the romance is impeded by the lack of chemistry between Pascal, Johnson and Evans. They are all charming and good-looking actors, but their characters are pretty flat. There is no urgency to any of their interactions, and it feels like each couple is together because the screenplay requires it. Their decisions don’t make sense, and Lucy, in particular, as a character is annoying and chaotic.

Beyond that, I don’t think Song is clear on what she wants to say with this movie. The script keeps beating the themes about relationships, money, and marriage in modern times over your head again and again. It gets very tedious. In fact, the way these things are presented make the characters even more bland as their dialogue is just reciting what the writer/director wants this movie to be about. Materialists could have been either a witty summer romance or an emotional romantic drama, but it succeeds at neither despite it having elements decent enough to cobble together one or the other.

Ultimately, Materialists is a romantic comedy that fails at both the romance and the comedy. The trio of stars do not have the chemistry needed to make you excited for either pairing in this love triangle. The screenplay is too didactic and obvious in stating its themes about marriage and relationships to be engaging. Altogether this movie is just boring and annoying. Unfortunately, I have to suggest you only stream Materialists if you’re bored.