Materialists 2025

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Materialists is a 2025 romantic comedy. It was written and directed by Celine Song. Chris Evans (Captain America), Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey), and Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us) are the film’s A-list stars. Materialists was released on June 13, 2025. The film enjoys an 81% positive score from professional reviewers at review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. Amateur reviews are less enthusiastic; they average an only 67% positive score. Materialists has made $35,848,149 against its production budget of $20 million. The film is a “surprise box office success” for its relatively new, small, and edgy distributor, A24 Films.

I loved Materialists. I loved the warm glow of the 35 mm film stock. I loved the gorgeous cast. I loved the few laugh-out-loud funny scenes – I have lived in that same apartment and had those same roommates. I loved the film’s attempt to engage big ideas. But the movie isn’t for everybody.

Materialists has received a great deal of attention from professional and amateur commentators. Materialists is not just a romantic comedy; it’s an essay addressing real-life romance as well as the romantic comedy genre. That being the case, it’s a good idea to talk a bit about the romantic comedy genre before talking about the film itself.

Romantic comedy is often dismissed as the “chick flick” genre, and therefore less worthy than more masculine genres like war movies. Critic Linda Holmes states the case baldly. Holmes wants us to stop saying “that love stories are less than war stories, or that stories that end with kissing are inherently inferior to stories that end with people getting shot.”

Haters mock the frothiness and sheen of romantic comedies. Sophisticated wit and rapid fire banter replace sweaty scenes of grunting and coupling. There’s a reason for these features of the genre. Romantic comedies try to recreate the emotional high humans feel when in love, the rose-colored glasses we see through, and they also invite us to laugh at our own folly. Given that romantic comedy focuses on the “romance” stage of relationships, before the rubber-meets-the-road physical intimacy phase, repartee is a rehearsal for sex. If your partner can’t match bon mot for bon mot, he might not be able to match caress for caress.

Humans are social animals. We need air, water, food, shelter, and close behind those needs, humans need relationships. Primitive humans needed family to hunt and gather. Modern humans, most of whom no longer hunt or gather, also need each other. A raft of statistics shows that married men are, on average, richer, healthier, happier, less likely to be in jail or to commit suicide, than single men. The statistics on the benefits of marriage to women are less clear, but single women are more likely to be poor than married women.

Conversely, we in the West now suffer from a loneliness epidemic. According to former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, many Americans feel “isolated, invisible, and insignificant.” “Loneliness … is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity.”

Recent studies suggest that young people today are in a “sex recession.” Many young people are not having sex at all. Journalist Carter Sherman‘s book The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over its Future argues that societal factors have crippled young people’s sexuality. The easy availability of internet pornography is one such factor. “Young people felt really bad about their relationship with porn. And they felt that porn had warped them sexually and normalized rough sex in such a way that they felt like their sex lives had been transformed forever by it.” Lessons on consent left too many girls “walking around feeling like the world is very dangerous.” Whereas “a lot of young men felt that they were made to feel like they were the bad guys, that they had done something wrong, even if they felt like they never had, or that they were going to be bad guys just by virtue of being men.”

The loneliness epidemic is related to other trends including a loss of meaning, loss of religious faith and religious engagement, loss of social cohesion, and the breakdown of the family, as reflected in increasing rates of births outside of marriage and the collapse of marriage rates. Our lack of connection is even affecting the housing crisis. The percent of single-person households in the US has tripled since 1940; almost a third of us live alone, and this is putting a strain on housing stock. Other people’s loneliness is our business if we pay taxes. Taxpayer dollars now subsidize functions, from child care to elder care, that had previously been fulfilled by intact families. A popular genre of art that addresses how humans form the bond with their life partner, which, for many, becomes the most significant bond of their lives, deserves our respectful attention.

The maze we traverse to obtain satisfying relationships changes regularly. Art helps us to navigate new sets of rules. Aristophanes’ Lysistrata premiered in 411 BC. It’s more a battle-of-the-sexes comedy than a romantic comedy, but it tells us that humans have been thinking and laughing about love and relationships for a long time.

Cinematic romantic comedies have never been better than Frank Capra’s 1934 classic It Happened One Night. That film was followed by one gem after another from the 30s and 40s: Libeled Lady, My Man Godfrey, The Awful Truth, Easy Living, Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, Ninotchka, The Philadelphia Story, The Shop Around the Corner, and others. Capra, Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, Leo McCarey, Preston Sturges, George Cukor, Howard Hawks, George Stevens, William Wyler, and John Ford were award-winning Hollywood giants who worked in many genres, including war movies and social commentary. They weren’t ashamed to master romantic comedy’s conventions and to produce classics in the genre.

After this Golden Age, the romantic comedy went into retreat. Rob Reiner’s 1989 film, When Harry Met Sally, revived the genre. It was a huge success, both critically and commercially. In 1993, Nora Ephron, When Harry Met Sally’s scriptwriter, directed and co-wrote Sleepless in Seattle. Ephron’s heyday, however, did not usher in a new Golden Age. Streaming services have produced a slew of romantic comedies that range between mediocre and unwatchable. They are, though, fit for parody.

The downfall of the genre is evidenced by the dearth of romantic comedies made by today’s award-winning directors. It’s hard to imagine a classic romantic comedy coming from the likes of David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, or, heaven help us, Ari Aster or Robert Eggers. These top contemporary directors have made films with graphic violence, Apocalyptic despair, and even a maggot-ridden corpse enjoying necrophiliac sex. But romantic comedy? No way!

It’s remarkable that romantic comedy’s Golden Age was during the Depression and World War II. America is now richer and healthier, but the genre experiencing new respect is horror. Veteran filmmaker Steven Soderbergh has said that if he were starting out now, he’d be a horror director.

Some argue that the Sexual Revolution killed romantic comedy. “How the Sexual Revolution Killed the Rom-Com. Cultural trends made Harry and Sally go the way of the eight-track tape,” argues a typical 2023 op ed.

Before the Sexual Revolution, pregnancy and the commitment to mother and child that communities demanded of fathers made sex more risky and more difficult to achieve. Women and men wanted different things. Women wanted a committed provider. Men wanted easy access to multiple young and attractive partners. Romance and wit were the social lubricants that mediated these conflicting agendas. Women worked hard to be beautiful and to allure without promising immediate access. Men strove to appear to be mature, well-heeled providers, while also avoiding the “trap” of marriage. Both parties had to change. Men had to commit to one partner. Women had to trade girlhood fantasies of Prince Charming for a man who might not recite poetry to his beloved. She had to kiss a frog to obtain a prince. She discovered that men can fix cars and open pickle jars. Men let go of fantasies of the entire Dallas cheerleading squad and dedicated themselves to that one woman who was a good mom, who kept a clean house and served him dinners he likes. Gestures that met such quotidian needs – he helped her on with her coat; she praised him in public – became, as it were, the verses of unwritten love sonnets.

Haters mock romantic comedies because, “There’s no suspense! You know who is going to end up with whom as soon as you see the movie poster!” Suspense is not the genre’s point. Romantic comedies are not about the what, but about the how. How do two dramatically different beings, a man and a woman, become, as the Bible says – four times! – “one flesh”? This is how: the woman surrendered a bit, the man did as well, and union was achieved, and a future generation promised. Romantic comedies are, thus, part of humanity’s defense against the specter of the Grim Reaper and the oblivion we all must confront eventually.

With the loosening of sexual norms following the introduction of birth control, and with women entering the workforce and providing for themselves, these conventions floundered. Men could avoid growing up and becoming successful economic beings. “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” some feminists promised.

The advanced chemistry of Tracy and Hepburn, the sizzling lust of Gable and Colbert, the mysterious eroticism of Greta Garbo versus the cool suavity of Melvyn Douglas, all melted in the hot sun of social isolates doing their own thing, inventing their own pronouns, and not needing each other.

It is, thus, remarkable that in 2025, in the very unlikely person of Celine Song, the romantic comedy should be having a moment. Celine Song, Materialists‘ writer and director, is a 36-year-old immigrant from South Korea. Her parents moved to Canada when she was twelve. She received an MFA in creative writing from Columbia in 2014. At a writers’ retreat, Song met Jewish-American playwright Justin Kuritzkes. They married. Song’s previous history gave little clue that she was about to create a romantic comedy that would get commentators all worked up.

Song’s experimental plays include 2019’s Endlings.  In Alexandra Schwartz’s devastating review in The New Yorker, the play comes across as an anti-white, anti-storytelling botch. Endlings opens with a dramatization of Korean women diving into the ocean to harvest seafood. The play then switches to a white man with a placard on his neck reading “WHITE HUSBAND. Also a playwright.” Song is clearly referring to her white playwright husband Justin Kuritzkes. Schwartz says that Song directs “accusatory sarcasm” at her mostly white audience. Song complains that she was “bribed by white people’s attention” to write a play about Korean divers. Song’s meta performance turns the play into “the work of an identity-peddling sellout … a group of white male actors … mime a performance of a ‘white play’ at a ‘white theater,’ saying things like ‘Oh my white god hear my white prayer.'”

Song also wrote The Feast, a play in which guests at a dinner party eat the hostess’ husband. One reviewer described the play as a “nauseating” and “desperate” exercise about people who “REALLY hate salad.”

In 2023, Song had a hit with her first film, Past Lives. Past Lives was inspired by an event from Song’s own life. In Past Lives, two Korean children, a twelve-year-old boy and girl, play happily. The girl’s family emigrates to Canada. The girl travels to Manhattan to pursue a career as a playwright. At a writer’s retreat, she meets a Jewish American playwright and marries him. Again, this is clearly a reference to Kuritzkes. Years later, her handsome, grown-up, “very masculine” Korean childhood friend visits her and her husband. The short, schlubby, well-meaning husband is reduced to a third wheel. The woman eventually informs her childhood friend that they are not fated to be lovers in this lifetime, because she is married to someone else. In spite of the Korean woman character, clearly based on Celine Song, staying with her American husband, many viewers felt sorry for the husband in the film. See, for example, here.

Past Lives was met with rapturous reviews from professional critics and audiences alike. Even male reviewers posted about how much they sobbed while watching this movie. Past Lives received multiple awards, including an Academy Award nomination for the year’s best picture, and it landed on multiple ten best lists.

I rarely hate films as much as I hated Past Lives. I found it lifeless, butt-numbingly dull, and underwritten to the point of anorexia. I would really like to put fans of this film into an MRI and check to see if, while watching Past Lives, the aesthetic pleasure regions of the brain light up, or, rather, if the “Pretentious foreign film snob” regions of the brain light up.

In 2024, a year after Past Lives was released, Song’s husband Justin Kuritzkes made a huge splash with his script for Challengers, about a manipulative woman who carries on affairs with two men at once, and plays them against each other. Kuritzkes denies that his real life has anything to do with the Challengers script. He says the script is “pure fantasy” inspired by watching tennis matches.

I have to wonder if her husband’s commercial success with Challengers sparked Song’s competitive drive and inspired her to make a commercially successful film. White people are not demonized in Materialists; in fact the cast is virtually all white, a rarity in today’s diversity-demanding cinematic market, and certainly not reflective of New York City’s population; the city is only one third white. Rather, Materialists is a slick, Hollywood romantic comedy, and that’s a very good thing to be, indeed.

Warning: the summary below will reveal the ending of Materialists.

Materialists opens on something that looks like the Grand Canyon. A primitive man, dressed in rough clothing woven from jute, approaches a primitive woman in a cave. She approaches the man. The man displays his tool kit. She examines his tools and smiles approvingly. He hands her flowers.

The scene switches to Manhattan. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) strides to work. She is wearing knee-high black leather boots, a micro-mini, a silk blouse and possibly no bra. She is very slender, her hair is long, and her make-up is perfect. A man ogles Lucy. She asks if he is single and hands him a business card. She is a matchmaker, and she recruits clients everywhere she goes.

Lucy phones two clients to ask for updates on their matches. The man is enraged. He had asked for women in their thirties. Sophie L. (Zoe Winters), the man’s date, is 39 – too old, he insists. (Referring to a client by a first name plus a last initial mirrors the attempt at anonymity of a matchmaking service.) Sophie’s date calls her “fat.” We meet Sophie later. She is attractive and not overweight. Sophie very much liked the date, and hoped to meet with the man again. Lucy must break the news to Sophie that the man has rejected her. Sophie is aghast. She reports that the man’s hair is receding. She was willing to accept him in spite of that flaw.

Lucy reports to work at the Adore matchmaking agency. All of her coworkers are as young and attractive as she is. They celebrate her ninth wedding. Lucy has been very successful at her job.

Lucy chats with a co-worker. As with the previous conversations with Sophie L. and her failed date, the two women’s conversation is focused on one theme: a human being’s worth is determined entirely by objective criteria. Is the woman fat? Does the man have a full head of hair? This theme will repeat in virtually every conversation throughout the film. “Do the math,” Lucy will say. Height, weight, income, age, and education determine who will love whom and why. “He checks a lot of our boxes,” Lucy will later explain, about why she will fix Sophie L. up with her next match, Mark P.

In contrast to the insistence that objective criteria alone determine human worth and also who loves whom, the film offers an opposing theme. Human love and also human value are transcendent and irreducible to mathematical formulae.

Lucy attends her client’s $600,000 wedding at the Plaza hotel. Always seeking clients, Lucy delivers her sales pitch to an audience of rapt women. She can find for them, not just a date, but a “nursing home partner, a grave buddy,” thus saving them from the dire fate of dying alone.

Lucy retreats to a private room with the bride, who bursts into tears. Even though Lucy has matched the bride with a man who “checks her boxes,” the bride suddenly does not want to marry. She wants to fulfill her feminist dreams of professional achievement. Lucy asks the bride what had attracted her to her potential groom. The bride confesses that the best thing about him is that he makes her sister jealous. The groom is taller and richer than her sister’s husband. “It makes me feel like I won.” Realizing this, the bride goes ahead with the wedding.

Harry (Pedro Pascal), another wedding guest, flirts with Lucy. Harry is a very wealthy man. Lucy says she is not interested in him as a potential date, but she would like to recruit him for Adore. He asks her what she’d like to drink. Lucy tells Harry that she wants to drink a Coke and a beer. Song says she chose this combo for Lucy’s signature drink to communicate to the audience that Lucy grew up poor, and her matchmaking job is her route to a better life. Coke and beer are ingredients you can get at any gas station, Song says, and Lucy is familiar with purchasing food and drinks at such unglamorous outlets. Also, in announcing that she likes to drink Coke and beer, Lucy is telling Harry that she is not of his class.

Before anyone can place the drink order, a Coke and a beer instantaneously appear in front of Lucy. Lucy is stunned. She turns around and recognizes the waiter. It’s John (Chris Evans), her ex-boyfriend. Evidently, John knows what Lucy likes. Without hesitation, though Harry has been deeply focused on flirting with Lucy, Lucy rises and hugs John. Harry is, for the moment, the third wheel.

John and Lucy reunite outside. John asks Lucy why the newlyweds were perfect for each other. They have similar levels of attractiveness, political beliefs, and backgrounds, Lucy explains.

John shrugs. He says he is poor, from a “shitty” family, and a Bernie voter.

Lucy asks John how acting is going. Aspiring actor John works as a waiter to make ends meet. John gazes at Lucy with evident desire. They may have broken up years ago, but, for John, the embers smolder. Materialists has just laid out its triangle. Lucy will be courted by Harry, a rich man, and John, a poor man. Whom will she choose? Will the film support the “materialist” premise that human worth is determined by objective criteria like wealth? Or will some mysterious, uncontrollable, intangible abstraction, love, decide Lucy’s fate? And, even if you can predict the outcome – remember, these films are not about suspense – how will Lucy change in order to bond with her choice?

In a flashback, a younger Lucy and John are driving through Manhattan, seeking parking. John’s car is old and small. It is their fifth anniversary as a couple. Lucy has made a reservation at an upscale restaurant. John refuses to pay to park. The clock is ticking. The restaurant will not keep their reservation. Lucy can’t take any more. She bursts out of the car and, standing in the street, screams at John. She is sick of being poor. She is sick of having to worry about having enough money for parking. “I don’t want to hate you because you are poor, but I do, so I hate myself.” John is furious, too, but also feeling helpless. His face reveals his internal torment. He loves Lucy, but he can’t keep her, because he is poor. They break up.

Back to the present day. Lucy meets with clients. Each client presents her with a specific list. One client wants a politically conservative closeted lesbian who doesn’t like cats. The men tend to want younger, “fit” women with low BMIs. The women want a man who makes at least six figures and has a full head of hair. Some say they don’t want to date a black person.

Lucy meets with Harry. She tells him that he should not be pursuing her. Because he is rich and charming, “You can do better than me,” she says. He can acquire a younger woman who will be attractive and fertile longer.

Harry will not be dissuaded. He invites Lucy home to his twelve-million-dollar penthouse. Even as he is kissing her, she is ogling his expensive abode.

John is in his apartment. It is noisy, small, and there are scuffed walls. He walks out of his bedroom and steps on a used condom. He bangs on a roommate’s door and sees him in bed with a woman. John yells at him about the used condom. Another roommate tells John to stop yelling; he is teaching a class on Zoom. John retreats to a small bathroom where he gazes at himself ruefully in the medicine cabinet mirror. He tries to close the medicine cabinet and it won’t close.

Back to Lucy in Harry’s luxurious penthouse. Harry has prepared a tempting breakfast spread for her. He is dressed in a formal suit and is leaving for work. He hands Lucy a key to his penthouse.

Lucy phones Sophie L. No one answers. She calls Mark P., the man with whom Lucy had matched Sophie. Mark says the date was good and he’d be open to seeing Sophie again.

At work, Violet, (Marin Ireland), Lucy’s boss, informs her that Mark sexually assaulted Sophie and Sophie is suing the company. Violet tells Lucy, “It happens to a lot of us.” Lucy is crushed. She had matched Sophie with Mark because he checked off so many boxes.

Lucy and Harry attend John’s off Broadway play. As the poster advertises, Tom and Eliza is a play written by none other than one Celine Song. After the awkward and bizarre performance of this experimental play, Harry is confused but tries to say something nice. Lucy tells John she is proud of him. The three go to a bar. Lucy and John talk alone. Lucy tries to broach the subject of Sophie L.’s assault and her own guilt feelings. John tries to be supportive, but given that Lucy can’t provide details about an ongoing legal matter, John isn’t aware of how dark things are. Trying his best, John can offer only well-meaning platitudes. Lucy is disappointed and becomes annoyed at him.

Violet, seeing that Lucy can’t get over Sophie’s assault, orders Lucy to take a break from work. Lucy stalks Sophie, tracks her down, and confronts her in the street. Lucy apologizes. Sophie is furious, and calls Lucy a “pimp.” Sophie insists that she is a worthy human being, not just merchandise or items on a check list.

John is shopping at a bodega. Lucy phones him. He exits the store and sits on the sidewalk. He is trying to be supportive. Lucy can’t divulge the details, but John discerns that Lucy is in emotional pain and he does his best, during the phone call, to stand by her. “I’m here,” he says. Lucy mentions Harry. John realizes that Lucy is not calling to rekindle her relationship with John. John is disappointed, but he clearly loves Lucy, and is supportive to her anyway, even though there is nothing in it for him.

Lucy is in bed at Harry’s penthouse. They are preparing for a vacation to Iceland. He is in the shower. She finds a diamond ring in his suitcase. She understands that Harry will propose to her. She might rejoice at this find. She has hit the jackpot. A wealthy and very nice man will marry her and take care of her for the rest of her life. Instead, she looks as if she has found a cockroach. She is suddenly realizing that the affair with Harry, though it checks many boxes, cannot give her that intangible, mysterious something – love.

Later, as Harry sleeps, Lucy is sleepless, and troubled. Lucy gazes at Harry’s body. She touches scars on his leg. Harry jumps out of bed and walks, wordlessly, into the kitchen. Lucy follows.

In the kitchen, Harry explains that the height-increasing surgery, that required his legs to be cut and extended, was a worthwhile investment. Adding six inches to his height made him respected by men and desired by women. “Would you have paid attention to me were I this tall?” he asks, crouching down.

Lucy acknowledges her own surgeries. She has had a nose job and breast enhancement. Lucy tells Harry that they must break up. He accuses her of breaking up with him because of his height-enhancing surgery. The viewer knows that the surgery is not what prompts Lucy’s decision. She saw the diamond ring, realized she didn’t love or want to marry Harry, and Sophie L.’s assault has turned Lucy’s worldview upside down. Lucy used to think materialistically. She had thought that “checking boxes” was enough. Mark P. checked boxes, and assaulted a woman. Lucy explains none of this to Harry. It was, inexplicably, only with broke, grouchy John that Lucy had felt safe to discuss her distress. Lucy says to Harry, simply, “I’m not in love with you, and you’re not in love with me.”

John is again mixing it up with his roommates. One of them took his charger and his phone is dead. John angrily grabs the purloined charger and drops his roommate’s phone in the green smoothie the thief is making in a blender. Lucy arrives with luggage. She had sublet her apartment for the length of the Iceland vacation. Can she stay with John?

He explains that his apartment is not suitable for her. He suggests that they drive upstate. Lucy agrees. On the highway, they pass a “Stand and Deliver” catering truck. That is John’s employer. He follows the truck and his coworkers facilitate John and Lucy crashing a bucolic wedding party. They dance under seductive lighting and kiss. John pulls away. Lucy asks why. Clearly, John is atremble with passion and vulnerability. He wants Lucy, but does not want to be abandoned again because he is poor. “Do you think I’m worthless? Disposable?”

“When I look at you,” John confesses. “I see wrinkles and gray hair and kids who look like you.” But, he says, he can’t compete. He is a 37-year-old actor who still has roommates and only $2000 in his bank account. “I still can’t afford to be with you.”

Lucy insists that it is she, rather than John, who is unlovable. “I’m not a good person,” she says. “I’m cold and materialistic and judgmental. I broke up with you because you’re broke. I’m awful. I don’t like cheap, shitty restaurants. I’m doing the math. This is what I’m like. How could you still love me?” she asks.

Sophie L. phones Lucy. Mark P. is outside her building, menacing her. Lucy and John spring into action. They drive back to Manhattan to protect Sophie. Lucy stays in the apartment, and John sits on the stoop outside, waiting for Lucy, guarding against Mark’s return.

Lucy exits Sophie’s apartment at dawn. John is still there. “You are the only reason I know I am capable of love,” she tells John.

“I will love you till the day I die,” John says.

As the film nears its conclusion, Violet, Lucy’s boss, offers Lucy a promotion, along with a larger salary. Harry becomes an Adore client. Sophie L. bounces back from her trauma, returns to Adore, and meets a nice guy, a dentist.

John and Lucy meet in a picturesque corner of Central Park. She is wearing a dress made from the fabric of the blouse she had been wearing when they had the fight about paying for parking.

“How would you like to make a very bad financial decision?” he asks her. He fashions a ring out of flowers and places it on her finger. This harkens back to the caveman who presented his loved one with flowers. The film closes at City Hall, where a variety of couples get married. The scene is shot as from the perspective of a security camera. Lucy and John are one couple in the crowd. The caveman and his bride also show up and take their final vows.

Again, I loved this movie. I loved the visual beauty, the intriguing ideas of human worth debated in just about every scene, and the laugh-out-loud funny scenes. I loved the cast. The film, though, has stirred up much controversy.

Some are angry at the film’s marketing. According to NoGood News, the film “rage-baited” men by setting up a website where men could enter personal information on, for example, their height, hairline, and income. The men were then assigned a number indicating their worth as a potential partner.

Others are enraged at Materialists because after viewing the trailer they thought they were getting a nostalgia package for a “90s rom-com,” and instead they got a movie focused on the very serious question of human worth.

Aisha Harris, a reviewer at National Public Radio, scolds Materialists for using Sophie’s assault as the catalyst for Lucy’s growth as a person. Justin Chang, in The New Yorker, similarly chastises the film. “There’s something questionable about how the film deploys sexual assault as a plot device, with an ancillary character’s trauma as a way station on Lucy’s path to learning and romantic fulfillment.”

I don’t agree. Serious themes, handled correctly, belong in romantic comedies. The Apartment addresses suicide. Love with the Proper Stranger includes an attempt at a back alley abortion. Sleepless in Seattle opens on a funeral and the surviving spouse’s inconsolable grief. In Pretty Woman, Philip (Jason Alexander), is shown onscreen violently hitting, knocking to the floor, and attempting to sexually assault Vivian (Julia Roberts).

Sophie L. is as rounded a character as any of the leads, and she’s given a full story arc. Zoe Winters’ fierce and yet vulnerable performance is riveting. Many female viewers will identify with Sophie’s loneliness, her determined search for love, her wide-eyed hope, her emotional devastation, and her resilient return to the fray. Many female viewers will recognize Sophie’s pain when men reject her for shallow reasons. I could believe that Lucy would be traumatized and changed by what happened to a woman she had come to consider as a friend.

Some viewers denounced Materialists as “broke man propaganda.” Lucy should not have ended up with John, these viewers insist. She should have chosen Harry, the rich man who can meet all of Lucy’s needs and desires. “Capitalism” and “patriarchy,” some argue, doom women to financial dependence on men. That being the case, it’s only right that women should choose the suitor with the most money. These critics express contempt for John’s life of financial sacrifice for his art. A 37-year-old who has roommates does not deserve any woman, they say.

I’ve watched several interviews with Celine Song and she gives every impression of really believing her movie’s main point – that intangible, uncontrollable, mysterious factors decide who loves whom. She has cited “inyeon.” She defines inyeon as a Korean Buddhist concept. Couples may have known each other for eight thousand previous lifetimes, and built up enough inyeon to be fated to marry. This accretion can be established in contact so minor as one’s clothing brushing against another’s as one walks along a street.

Materialists’ cast defies its insistence that intangible factors decide who loves whom. Chris Evans, who plays grouchy, broke actor John, is most famous for playing Captain America. He’s no longer in Marvel-movie-level ripped mode, but he still has a terrific body. He’s tall, with broad shoulders, well muscled arms and chest, slim hips, and long legs. He’s got a gorgeous face, a full head of hair, and good teeth. He’s blessed with a lovely, masculine voice. In 2022, Buzzfeed tried to measure how hot Chris Evans is and they came up with, “Chris Evans is Violently Hot … Really, Extremely, Devastatingly Hot.” In Knives Out, Chris Evans wore a sweater. Critic Anna Menta tweeted, “the girl next to me gasped and said very softly and tenderly, ‘Sweater.'” The style of sweater Evans wore immediately sold out at multiple sellers.

Evans was not blessed by Olympus only with thoroughbred looks. He gives the best performance in Materialists. His grouchiness at being poor, his dedication to his art, his Boy Scout dedication to Lucy even when he has every reason to believe that she is going to marry Harry, are all not just believable, they are heart melting. Did Lucy really sacrifice anything to marry John, played by a man who is “violently hot”? Was it really something “intangible” that attracted her to him, or the very “material” qualities the film wants us to sniff at?

John may have only $2000 in his bank account, but that face, that body, and that charisma are all assets. Attractive wait staff earn more money than average looking wait staff, according to studies.

John Magaro is a 42-year-old actor. He’s 5’7″ tall. He has a high forehead, a weak chin, a droplet nose, and bushy hair. He was terrific in September 5 as an overwhelmed ABC sports producer suddenly confronted with handling the broadcast of the Islamic terrorist massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Magaro was in Celine Song’s first film, Past Lives. There he plays the overwhelmed husband suddenly confronted with handling his wife’s relationship with her childhood sweetheart. In Materialists, Magaro is the voice of Mark P., the creep who assaults Sophie L.

What if Magaro, and not Chris Evans, had played John? What if short, average-looking Magaro were the guy driving a junky car and living with roommates at age 37? And a woman who looks the way Dakota Johnson looks in her knee-high leather boots, silk blouse, no bra, and long, silky hair gave up Harry for John? Materialists would be a completely different movie. And that fact alone tells us that Celine Song is wrong, and her own casting defies the point she’s trying to make. And that’s okay. Romantic comedies are one genre of film; documentaries are another.

Danusha V. Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery.