MATERIALISTS*

Writer-director Celine Song's follow-up to her wildly, and rightly, praised debut feature PAST LIVES is a dud.  I just don't get it. It wasn't funny, it wasn't romantic, it didn't have a lot of dramatic tension, and it tried to balance wry commentary on modern dating with a very serious assault storyline that jarred tonally and was handled too lightly and peripherally for my liking. I don't think you get to use a plot device like that to further your protagonist's emotional arc.

Dakota Johnson stars as a modern day matchmaker dealing with New Yorkers' unrealistic expectations.  She values her clients according to material aspects - age, wealth, height - and given her childhood marred by parental fights over money - seeks a rich husband herself.  At a client's wedding she seemingly gets everything she wants in "unicorn" rich handsome Pedro Pascal.  But she also runs into her old boyfriend, a poor and shambolic wannabe actor played by Chris Evans. There is zero dramatic tension as to who the matchmaker will end up with.  This story is one of her journey to accepting actual real love as opposed to material comfort.  Even worse, there is none of that intimate, deeply felt, perceptive storytelling that we got in PAST LIVES.  There's only one scene that even approximates it, when Johnson and Evans' characters are observing a wedding from a distance, just as the couple created imaginary stories for diners at the start of PAST LIVES. What a tremendous let down.

MATERIALISTS is rated R and has a running time of 116 minutes. It was released in the USA in June and will be released in the UK on August 15th.