'Materialists' review: Like dating, Dakota Johnson's rom-com gets messy

'Materialists' review: Like dating, Dakota Johnson's rom-com gets messy
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'Materialists': Dakota Johnson wooed by Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal
A matchmaker (Dakota Johnson) finds herself in a love triangle with her ex (Chris Evans) and a wealthy new guy (Pedro Pascal) in "Materialists."
No actor wants to be pigeonholed but for the love of Nora Ephron, Dakota Johnson is really better off sticking with romantic comedies. Or something rom-com adjacent.
The stink of 'Madame Web' couldn't overpower Johnson's top-notch performances in 'Am I OK?' and 'Cha Cha Real Smooth.' And she's back in her groove for 'Materialists' (★★½ out of four; rated R; in theaters June 13), writer/director Celine Song's starry follow-up to her acclaimed and Oscar-nominated 'Past Lives.'
Both embracing and deconstructing the genre, "Materialists" is a well-acted affair with three A-list leads – Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal – and while certainly thoughtful, the film's strengths are upended by a mood-murdering melancholy.
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'Materialists' definitely doesn't start that way, with an assembly line of absurdly superficial single people looking for love – or at least settling for somebody not physically repulsive. At times it even feels like an art-house version of Will Smith's fizzy rom-com 'Hitch.' Lucy (Johnson) is an uncannily good elite matchmaker in New York City with nine weddings to her credit, and because dating for her is way trickier than actual love, she ignores her own personal life while making her pickiest clients happy.
Then one night, Lucy is suddenly engulfed in a love triangle. At a wedding reception, investment banker Harry (Pascal) sidles up to her at the singles table. Lucy wants to give him her business card – he's a 'unicorn,' a tall, good-looking and extremely wealthy Mr. Right – but he's interested in making a match with her. Just as he's putting on the moves, Lucy's ex John (Evans) walks up, because of course he's going to be a cater waiter at this exact wedding shindig.
There's no macho posturing between the two guys – instead, Song has written them each as decent suitors to Johnson's conflicted Lucy. Pascal, who you can't escape from in pop culture these days, is all flirty charm, yet Harry has his own issues, including lack of character development. Evans is all scrappy underdog energy as John, a struggling actor still holding a fire for Lucy even after their nasty breakup.
Johnson's character, in addition to juggling a pair of bachelors, also becomes disillusioned with her job after a disturbing incident involving a client. But the actress does her darnedest to make Lucy somewhat watchable, given that she's just as annoyingly bourgeois as her clients in wanting a deep-pocketed guy and broke John's heart because he himself was broke.
Song squeezed every hard feeling and big emotion out of her characters in 'Past Lives,' and she takes a similar tack with her 'Materialists' trio. However, the movie doesn't feel all that modern as it tackles 21st-century romance – matchmaking is such an anachronistic concept, whereas online dating is mostly ignored here. (Maybe it's harder to find your right rich person on Tinder?)
You can see the points that the director is trying to make as she takes aim, in some instances mockingly, at rom-com tropes. In Lucy's world, people are not seen as caring humans as much as they are an array of assets, values and numbers in some grand math equation. Solve for X and you, too, might find love! But there's so much going on between Lucy's multiple-choice dude test and work dramas, the message gets lost.
'Materialists' has plenty of thoughtful intentions, even if the film is tonally all over the place. Maybe that's partly point, though. If there's anything tonally all over the place in real life, it's dating.
How to watch 'Materialists'
"Materialists," starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal, is in theaters June 13. It's rated R by the Motion Picture Association "for language and brief sexual material."

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