Materialists Exposes the Cold, Capitalist Reality of Modern Dating

Celine Song’s latest film strips the sheen off matchmaking and reveals the transactional mess behind love in the dating economy.

Sneha Kashyap June 20, 2025Last Updated: June 20, 2025

53,581 3 minutes read

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Reviewed & Published by HH Entertaintment Desk

Celine Song’s Materialists isn’t just another sleek, rom-com-shaped thing — it’s a Molotov cocktail lobbed at the glossy dating-industrial complex. On paper, it’s a love triangle with three beautiful people (Dakota Johnson! Pedro Pascal! Chris Evans!). But peel back the aesthetic, and you’ve got a scalpel-sharp takedown of how dating has turned into capitalism with a flirt filter.

And no, it’s not exactly cute. Unless you think capitalism in a cocktail dress is cute.

Matchmaking, but Make It Corporate

The movie drops us into the world of Lucy (played with precision and icy charm by Dakota Johnson), a high-end New York matchmaker who talks about love the way your accountant talks about tax brackets. Her job? To pair off the city’s beautiful and wildly eligible — but not without asking their preferred BMI and bank balance first.

She’s less Cupid and more HR rep for the emotionally unavailable.

Lucy isn’t just matching people; she’s curating value-based portfolios of romantic compatibility. Think Suits, but for dating. One particularly bleak line has her comparing her job to “a mortician or an insurance claims adjuster,” which tells you everything you need to know about her views on modern romance.

Tall, Rich, and Emotionally Available? Pick Two.

Enter Harry (Pedro Pascal, suavely rich and devastatingly charming), who falls for Lucy while she’s mid-existential spiral. He’s everything the algorithm wants: tall, Ivy-league adjacent, dripping with casual wealth. Lucy, who clocks in at $80,000 a year, immediately tries to self-sabotage: “You can do better,” she tells him. He responds with the kind of rom-com line that sounds good in the moment but curdles on the ride home: “I have enough material assets. I’m looking for intangible ones now.”

Meanwhile, Lucy’s ex, John (Chris Evans, playing delightfully against Captain America type), reappears like the emotionally messy ghost of cuffing season past. Broke but genuine, John’s the human equivalent of that one unread DM you keep circling back to.

Suddenly, our matchmaker — who sells “forever” like it’s a Costco product — can’t tell if she’s in love or just glitching in the matrix of her own sales pitch.

Dating Apps with a Side of Existential Dread

If you’ve ever been single in the age of dating apps, this film might feel a little too real. Clients list their dating preferences with all the warmth of an Amazon product review: “Must be tall,” “Make six figures,” “No dad bods.” It’s dating as inventory — and Lucy’s job is to find the SKU that fits.

Director Celine Song, who reportedly dipped into her own past as a matchmaker for this one, doesn’t hold back. We hear one woman request a partner who’s not “too brown,” while another demands someone thin “but with muscle tone.” These aren’t straw-man caricatures — they’re pulled straight from the toxic soup of real-life dating expectations. (Raise your hand if you’ve heard someone say, “He’s perfect, but he’s 5’8.”)

The Rom-Com That Left You on Read

Sure, Materialists has all the trappings of a classic romantic triangle — but it refuses to play by genre rules. There’s a wedding, but it’s laced with awkward silences. There’s a declaration of love, but no swelling music. And the “happy ending” at City Hall? It lands more like an open question than a curtain call.

Even Lucy’s final choice — ditching Mr. Wall Street for her financially unstable ex — isn’t played as a mic-drop moment. Instead, Song lingers on the ambivalence. Did she follow her heart or just walk away from a system she no longer believes in? And did she actually escape, or just downgrade?

It’s not so much And they lived happily ever after as it is They lived, question mark.

Matchmakers Weigh In: “We’re Not All Like That!”

Real-life matchmakers have been watching with popcorn and side-eyes. Some, like Maria Avgitidis (founder of Agape Match), called the film’s portrayal “super bleak,” arguing that in the real world, pros screen for safety and actually care about emotional compatibility. Others, like Beth Mandell, admitted the movie nails the “datafication” of modern love, even if the industry isn’t that robotic.

The film’s most controversial plot point — a client being assaulted by someone Lucy matched her with — had professionals fuming. “I’ve fired employees for less,” Mandell told People, slamming the idea that a matchmaker would brush off such red flags. It’s the kind of cinematic shortcut that makes for good drama, but not great PR for anyone in the business of love.

Capitalism Is the Real Villain

At its core, Materialists isn’t trying to cancel matchmaking — it’s trying to expose the systems that turn intimacy into inventory. It asks the uncomfortable question: If dating is a market, are we just commodities?

Song doesn’t offer answers. But she does leave us with a discomfiting truth — the most “rational” choice isn’t always the most human one. And maybe, just maybe, love is the one place where the math should never add up.

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Author Profile

Sneha Kashyap

Reporting Fellow at Hindustan Herald

Sneha Kashyap is a Reporting Fellow at Hindustan Herald, specializing in the vibrant world of entertainment and contemporary lifestyle trends. A student at GGSIPU, Delhi, Sneha brings a fresh perspective and a keen eye for cultural narratives to her daily reporting. She is dedicated to exploring the latest in film, music, fashion, and social phenomena, offering readers insightful and engaging content.