‘Materialists’ Questions What Makes A Good Romance: At The Movies With Kasey
Recently, my husband and I watched My Best Friend’s Wedding, a classic rom-com that, at the distance of nearly 30 years, seems fairly deranged. Nonetheless, that movie showcases part of what makes its genre so much fun. It is boisterous in its costumes, soundtracking, and characters. From the volume of Julia Roberts’s hair to her screaming down her flip phone, it is joyful and larger than life.
I thought of the sounds and textures of the romantic comedies I love while settling into Materialists, which uses romantic comedy tropes but tries to do something more serious with them. In the film, Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a matchmaker, meets Harry (Pedro Pascal), the rich and handsome brother of the groom at the wedding of one of her clients. She also runs into her ex-boyfriend, John (Chris Evans), who is working for the caterer. As Lucy starts dating Harry, over her protests that he’s out of her league, she still feels pulled back to John, setting up an internal battle about what is more important- a match that makes sense or love.
One of the most striking features of Materialists is not the gorgeous, tasteful sets or the sleek wardrobe of its heroine, it’s how quiet the movie is. The sound design almost creates a noise-canceling bubble around important questions, prompting the audience to lean in a bit and consider what Lucy is saying when she frames marriage as a business deal or asks a client what she is looking for in a mate.
Usually, I find Dakota Johnson’s performances a little flat, but in this film, her soft-spoken and reserved performance suits the character beautifully, drawing out her hesitations and internal conflict without overly dramatizing the situation. As Harry, Pedro Pascal is perfectly cast, masculine and vulnerable. I struggled to see what Lucy saw in John, to be honest, but I give credit to Chris Evans for making the character decidedly not Captain America. He leans into how tired and burnt-out John is–kind of a jerk, but not on purpose. Even still, the chemistry is not quite there, so the love triangle ends up lopsided in a way that undermines the plot of the film.
Alongside the main plot, Lucy struggles to find a match for Sophie, played by Zoe Winters in one of the strongest performances of the film. Sophie is angry, entitled, and heartbroken, and Winters gives this slightly underdeveloped character an authenticity that makes her feel like a person you might know. The writing in the last half an hour drags and then pulls its punches, but Winters’ scenes are the most moving and conflicting part of the conclusion.
In the screenplay, Celine Song backed herself into a bit of a corner. She raises interesting questions about the financial side of marriage, but the framing of the story in a classic love triangle propels toward a certain kind of ending. No matter what she had done, some would balk at the conclusion, so I wish she had gone harder at the themes of risk, worth, and superficiality that she set up in the first act. Still, I enjoyed the artistic choices in Materialists and thinking over the characters and the complicated choices they make.
Materialists was written and directed by Celine Song. It runs 115 minutes and is rated R.
Speaking of Pedro Pascal, The Wild Robot landed on Netflix. My daughter and I read the book as part of our summer reading challenge and loved the story of Roz, a robot who gets shipwrecked on an island uninhabited by humans and learns how to survive from the animals. It’s a truism that the book is always better than the movie, but I was shocked by how much the film adaptation flattened the themes of the book. The Wild Robot is still a good movie and my daughter loved it, but the book is more nuanced and eventful by a wide margin.
In the film, The Wild Robot Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) wakes up on an island after some silly otters accidentally press her power button. She causes a tragic accident which results in her adopting a goose egg and the gosling who hatches from it, Brightbill (Kit Connor). With some help from a fox, Fink (Pedro Pascal), an opossum, Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara), and an elder goose, Longneck (Bill Nighy), Roz learns how to mother her charge and that life is not only about the satisfactory completion of tasks.
In the book, Roz requires significantly more assistance from the animals, and by earning their trust and following their advice, she learns about the delicate balance between different parts of the island’s ecosystem, as well as reciprocity, sacrifice, and love. In the film, many of those interactions get truncated or shifted to Fink, who is a cute character, but the shift strips much of the complexity of the story.
Still, The Wild Robot is a fun action-adventure story with a tender streak and beautiful voice acting by Lupita Nyong’o in particular. It is a great choice for family movie night, but, seriously, read the book too.
The Wild Robot was written and directed by Chris Sanders, based on the book by Peter Brown. It runs 112 minutes and is rated PG.
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