“There’s just not a standout quality.”

Curiously opening with the dawn of man and transitioning to present day New York, Materialists posits that romantic relationships are primal and that rings and flowers are as learned as they are ceremonial. It’s a beguiling and interesting intro for a film that never really investigates its own wishes or questions, and I’m still not sure how this is even a real motion picture wanting to be taken seriously. Materialists lives up to its name by being daft, dull, poorly acted and sorely lacking in earned romance or laughs that aren’t produced from secondhand embarrassment. It’s awfully bad.

We follow Lucy (Dakota Johnson, detached from her role as ever), a matchmaker in the big city who tries her best to make wishes come true for others, all while being practical and reasonable in her own love life. Lucy has set up lots of marriages, is respected in her field, and constantly compares dating to “doing the math”…whatever the hell that means. And as fate would have have it, a client’s wedding introduces her to a love interest of her own. He’s Harry (Pedro Pascal), a charming and doting man of wealth and notoriety, which appeals to Lucy because she takes after the film’s title. Their romance blossoms despite run-ins with her old partner John (Chris Evans), a floundering actor who shares a rundown apartment and still caters weddings – like the one where Harry and Lucy met – to make ends meet. Lucy likes Harry but obviously still loves John. It’s basic arithmetic after all.

Materialists is at its best when Lucy ditches Harry and struggles to reconcile her affection for the flailing John. Harry has secrets and John has past due bills, and Lucy is stuck picking between the two extreme options instead of having the agency to explore elsewhere. But if she did that, this wouldn’t make for much of an intimate picture either. And I think that’s why the movie doesn’t gel together. You can’t expect a romantic comedy/drama to succeed when it’s hardly funny and the seriousness of it all is hard to take in without a chuckle or a grin. None of the longing looks or wanting eyes really carry any weight. It’s all flat, basic, name-brand emotions.

Stiff dialogue, stiff performances, stiff direction. It’s baffling to me that Celine Song’s follow-up to Past Lives – one of the best films in recent memory – could be so stale and so mundane. And even though the film looks incredible, it just doesn’t pack any sort of emotional punch. If anything, I found myself laughing at the absurdity of it all. In what world does an employer tell you to take 4 weeks off? How is a man lengthening his legs one of the major plot points in a dramatic film and not a Mike Myers satire? Why is the sound design so bad that we can literally hear fake footsteps shuffling in the background? Materialists is a pretty package with nothing of import tucked inside, and to call it hollow at least acknowledges the cadaver of it all. What a big, beautiful, empty pool of nothingness. The math doesn’t math.

“I don’t think that you and I are a good match.”

Rating: 2 out of 5