"The world has got confused about what constitutes a romantic comedy," said Donald Clarke in The Irish Times. And director Celine Song's follow-up to 2023's Oscar-nominated "Past Lives" is certainly a complicated proposition. It "has the shape" of a romcom: the film stars Dakota Johnson as Lucy, a professional matchmaker who earns her living hooking up high-flying New Yorkers with suitable – and suitably wealthy – partners.
When she meets Harry (Pedro Pascal), a handsome, tall and hugely rich financier at the wedding of one of her "matches", it seems her destiny is sealed. Yet at the same event, she bumps into her ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans), a struggling actor working as a waiter. The scenario could have made a "cracking Doris Day flick". Except Song doesn't seem "particularly interested in generating laughs" or warmth. Instead, her screenplay is full of "sharp, often cynical observations on this society's commodification of human relations". "Materialists" is a little puzzling, but it's clever and "gorgeous", and "it has the welcome oddness of a future classic".
"Stories that foreground the economics of romance are hardly new," said Wendy Ide in The Observer – from Jane Austen to "Sex and the City". The problem with this one is that it lacks depth. Also, it's so preoccupied with asset valuations that it "neglects to include any normal conversations".
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