The new movie "Materialists" is about dating through the eyes of people who join expensive dating services, and through the eyes of professional matchmakers, in this case, the main character Lucy, played by Dakota Johnson. It is good to see Dakota Johnson in a very good acting role, and recovering from last year's disastrous "Madame Web". Johnson demonstrates in this film some of the best acting of her career.
Of all the difficult professions that exist in the world, being a high-end matchmaker with a fee as high as $50,000 has to be one of the all-time emotional worst. There are several scenes in this movie where a client sits in a restaurant quoting a long list of unrealistic expectations about the person they think they deserve. All of these clients forget that any dating service cannot accept a long list of expectations and then generate the perfect person like it's an AI-human-being-creator. This is because any dating service, regardless of the cost, is only as good as the people who join. No perfect person exists anywhere in the world for anyone.
As part of this long list of wants and do-not-wants, there is a great deal of talk about how much people earn in salary, as if that is one of the most important requirements for the perfect long-term partner. One of the main messages in this very good movie is the long-term on-and-off-again relationship of Lucy and her very broke waiter, trying to be an actor boyfriend, John, played very well by Chris Evans. The contrast between Lucy's current rich boyfriend Harry, played by Pedro Pascal, and John, along with Lucy's eventual decision about them, is one of the best parts of this extremely well-written screenplay.
As several critics have said that screenwriter-director Celine Song paints a very bleak and depressing story about the realities of dating in this world, but most would agree that her point of view is more about the reality of trying to find love, and much less about just being negative about all of the heartache, and depression involved. Dating will always involve putting your heart and soul into the hands of a total stranger, and then trying to accept the consequences when a person you might potentially love does not feel the same way about you.
For me, the actor who steals this entire movie is Sophie, played by Zoe Winters. Her repeated comments about "dying alone" and one scene where the pain in her eyes when she hears that the previous person she went out with did not feel the same way about her are great acting moments in this movie. Later, Sophie's conversation with Lucy after the latest in a string of 10 bad dates attacked her, included a moment when she breathlessly tells Lucy that she "deserves love". In my opinion, Winters is worthy of an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress for these two scenes alone.
The one thing I hated about this movie is the chain-smoking that Lucy does with several other characters. Smoking happens in movies because cigarette companies finance the production despite the downside that includes too many people continuing to smoke or taking it up as a new, stupid hobby. As we all know, smoking causes a long list of Cancers, and showing smoking in movies should have been banned decades ago.
The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a very high 87%, with my rating 95% and a 100% rating for this category of movie, showing what it is like for so many millions of us, who try to find true love in our lifetimes.
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