Richard Crouse

SYNOPSIS: Set against the backdrop of New York City, the Rom Com Capitol of the World®, “Materialists” sees Dakota Johnson play Lucy, a matchmaker for the rich and famous. “I promise you’re going to marry the love of your life,” she says to her clients. She has arranged nine marriages but personally, keeps romance at arm’s length after a messy break-up. Things change for the “eternal bachelorette” when she meets wealthy charm-bomb Harry Castillo (Pedro Pascal). “You are what we call a unicorn,” she tells him, “an impossible fantasy.” As romance blossoms, Lucy’s life is upended by the return of her broke ex-boyfriend, John (Chris Evans), forcing her to choose between a perfect match and her imperfect ex.

CAST: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal. Written and directed by Celine Song.

REVIEW: A rom com that emphasizes the rom over the com, “Materialists” takes several big leaps, story wise, to arrive at the fairly simple idea that the heart wants with the heart wants. There’s no fifty-shades of nuance here.

As a matchmaker, Lucy (Dakota Johnson) treats her clients like commodities, not humans. She talks about the “math” of relationships, the calculation of compatibility plus physical appearance plus bank account, but admits, “We promise them love, but the math doesn’t add up.”

In other words, sometimes perfect on paper, isn’t perfect.

With “Materialists” writer-director Celine Song takes a deep dive into the need for real human connection, the kind of bond that is messy, unpredictable, sometimes illogical and can’t be summed up by a simple equation.

It’s the stuff of rom coms, boiled down to its essence.

There are a handful of mild laughs, but don’t come to “Materialists” looking for slapstick. Song subverts the genre, poking fun at the often unreasonable demands prospective daters want regarding class and age. “39 isn’t in the 30s,” says an older guy who wants to date thirty-year-olds, by which he means a woman in her mid-to-late twenties.

The “interview” segments between Lucy and her clients are often funny and more often ridiculous but they don’t set the tone for the entire film. Song isn’t as interested in the ins-and-outs of modern dating as she is in the bond people form when the math is taken out of the equation. It aims to be a realistic rom com of a sort—although you could argue that Lucy’s $80,000 salary is an unrealistic figure given her high end wardrobe and NYC apartment—about how there is no formula for love that avoids most of the formulas of the genre.