The Materialists

Ya know when this movie first came out I thought what a shame it is that Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans were even in this movie. Because I love both of them and they are fantastic actors but the person that ties their characters together is Dakota Johnson and she’s just such a bad actress.

God even just the way she delivers her lines is so wooden. It's like she’s a parody actor. It sounds like she doesn’t know how people talk. Her mouth barely moves. I understand that lots of people aren’t super expressive in their faces or vocal inflections but when you are acting, in film, you need to give us something. Selena Gomez does this very well in Only Murders in the Building. She has the ability to deliver deadpan lines but also be really expressive in her eyes and body language, Dakota Johnson does not have this ability.

We just had a scene of following Dakota Johnson down a hallway with a bunch of women wearing heels. That was a sonic nightmare. I think they were going for comedy but it didn’t work. I now believe that Dakota Johnson is an alien from another planet and has infiltrated Hollywood in an attempt to learn how us humans move and speak.

I figured it out guys, Dakota sounds like she is reading for her scene partners. So when an actor needs to film a self tape or go in for an in person audition when they act through the sides, there is someone else reading lines in order for the actor to get cues. This second person is not an actor and delivers these lines with no emotion. That’s what she sounds like. I will now move on, but I promise you it's gonna bug me the whole movie.

Okay we have now reached a point in the movie where I can’t tell if I hate Dakota Johnson or the writing. I unfortunately think that it's both. She is in fact terrible, but I fear so is the writing. The whole “you can’t possibly be interested in me, I’m just a girl and you are perfect” monologue is so terrible. It screams written by a man but it was unfortunately written by a woman, which is more than a little disappointing.

Also the very idea of a woman being caught between the rich man and the poor dude is just so stale and tired, I got bored typing that.

This whole movie feels like a trippy teenage girl fantasy. That’s about how deep this is. It feels like it's written by a 14 year old girl who thought, “what if I married a guy who could afford to buy me a pony?”. It’s ridiculous.

Her client was assaulted on a date and her boss's response is “this is dating”. Okay, while it is true that women get assaulted on dates every single day, and it is in fact not the matchmakers fault, for her boss to insinuate that it's fine and it happens is a crazy response. It’s also indicative of how the actual world treats rape.

The story seems really unfocused. She spirals pretty hard after hearing her client was attacked which is understandable but her stalking the client and spinning out is taking over the narrative. I know that we need moments that force her to question what she believes, and I think that’s what this little sidequest was attempting. But I think that doubt needs to come more from her and less from outside sources. This should have been a story about a very calculated, ambitious woman who gets caught up in a whirlwind romance with the man of her dreams. She then realizes that he’s not all she’s dreamed of and her ex has everything she actually wants. It’s not a difficult narrative but they somehow fuck it up anyway.

A movie like this only works if you are either 1) invested in the main character or 2) invested in either or both of the relationships. And unfortunately they’ve done none of the work on any of these fronts. I am not invested in any of these people. She doesn’t actually have any relationships because these men have gotten like 30 seconds of total screentime. There is no emotional core to this film at all.

Also the whole scene of PEDRO PASCAL saying that women never came up and talked to him until he got the surgery to be taller is the most hilarious bullshit I’ve ever seen.

“When I see your face I see wrinkles and grey hair and children that look like you” Wow sometimes good writing just comes out of nowhere in a bad movie and it was of course delivered by the wonderful Chris Evans.

See we needed this connection moment way earlier in the movie and there was nothing between her and Pedro Pascal.

There was just no development of these relationships at all. I think the existence of Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal grants this movie a total of 4 points, 2 for each of them but that’s all I give. They were the best part of the film and nothing else is salvageable 4/10.