Materialists Review: A Love Story About Choosing Wrong
Why the casting doesn't quite work — and why Celine Song's new rom-com falls short of Past Lives (Now streaming on Netflix)
I absolutely loved Celine Song’s 2023 hit Past Lives. We were genuinely excited to see her take on a modern-day rom-com. I was disappointed.
On the very, very surface, this is a love triangle: a rich guy, a poor guy, and a girl. But it wants to be much more than that, and that’s where the problems begin. SPOILER WARNING.
The casting is full of holes.
Dakota Johnson could plausibly play the female protagonist, but she is too aloof to be charming or relatable here. She shines in roles where the character can be silly or unserious. Her sexuality is often a key part of her screen presence. She will never read this review, and she is a fantastic human being whom I love and respect, so allow me to be a bit mean: she’s hot enough to be boring. That quality works when the role leans into it. It does not work for this character.
This character needed nuance. You had to love her and recognize yourself in her. Even as she drifted. Even as she led on someone clearly wrong for her but willing to tolerate her. Instead, she never becomes likable or relatable enough for that forgiveness to kick in. And yes, apparently she is also not hot enough for the audience to overlook it.
Chris Evans is also miscast. Chris Evans is Chris Evans. He is a classically handsome man. He is Captain America. While I personally relate more to Pedro Pascal (more on that later), the casting logic here is hard to swallow. There is no world where I believe Dakota Johnson’s character is casually stringing along a Chris Evans character who genuinely loves her. In what world does a man who looks like Chris Evans have such low self-esteem that he allows himself to be treated this way?
You end up resenting Dakota Johnson’s character even more. Why is she being so difficult? This man loves her completely, sees her entirely, and she toys with him. The imbalance stops revealing character and starts feeling distracting.
Pedro Pascal is miscast too, though for a different reason. The film arrived at the height of a Pedro Pascal moment: The Last of Us, Eddington, early Fantastic Four hype. He was probably the most likable male actor on the planet. And yet he’s cast as the “rich guy” with almost no inner life. A man who loves with his head rather than his heart. A man who compensates with money, who cheats emotionally, who is meant to feel hollow and vaguely unappealing.
That was not 2025 Pedro Pascal. He had become aspirational and approachable at the same time. A treat for women; a man other men could see themselves in. The disconnect is impossible to ignore.
I suppose the fact that I keep referring to these people by their real-life actor names rather than their character names says enough about how unconvincing the casting is. I never fully believe in them as characters, only as famous faces performing an idea. I wouldn’t blame the actors for the lack of suspension of reality; the problem sits with the casting.
The plot and resolution suffer as a result. Given the ending, what exactly is the film saying? Dakota Johnson’s character settles for Chris Evans. She doesn’t love him. She doesn’t seem to respect him. He stays because he loves her deeply and because he’s always there for her. Is that the modern idea of love? Settling?
I understand that at some point we shift from romantic idealism to choosing what feels safest or most functional. But her character is at the peak of her career and personal life. She’s financially secure. She’s attractive. She meets eligible partners constantly. That’s literally how she meets Pedro Pascal’s character. This is not the moment to settle, especially not for someone who “loves her more.”
A stronger ending would have been her choosing neither man. That would have felt genuinely modern. You don’t stay with someone you don’t love. You don’t stay with someone who loves you more than you respect them. And as the film itself suggests, you also don’t stay with someone you love more than they love you.
What would have resonated more with millennials and Gen Z, what might have actually felt like a statement, is something simpler: love yourself first.
There’s also a completely unnecessary scene where the characters get lost, crash a wedding, and stumble into a beautifully lit evening garden, fresh from the heroics of the Chris Evans character. The dialogue turns cheesy. It pulled me out of the film because it didn’t belong to the emotional language the movie had established.
The film has a half-formed idea about modern dating as résumé-checking and stat-comparing, but that’s never really explored. It feels more like a marketing hook than the heart of the story. You can’t casually label something a modern-day rom-com. A rom-com should make you feel light, giddy, open. I felt none of that. I felt irritated and let down.
Which makes this all more frustrating, because Past Lives showed how good Celine Song can be.
Past Lives was original. It was grounded. It trusted silence. It said something new in a space where most things feel recycled. I cried watching it. Scenes carried emotional weight without dialogue. It acknowledged uncomfortable truths without explaining them away. It recognized longing, nostalgia, and the quiet comfort of security without judgment.
My heart broke a little watching Past Lives, and it also felt full. That bittersweet aftertaste stayed.
Here, the casting and the destination don’t make sense, even if the journey occasionally does. The actors are undeniably attractive. I was curious enough to stay engaged. But the ending didn’t earn that investment.
3 out of 5.
Go watch Past Lives instead.
