The intangibles.

The Materialists — 3/5

I think I like the ideas behind this movie more than the movie. It reminds me of 'Fleishman Is in Trouble', which is an all-timer of a piece of art, and more explicitly speaks to the underlying themes of that show — love as a relationship with money. However. Doesn't this feel like it should have been a romantic comedy? Honestly, I think it is a romantic comedy. Imagine Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey going tit-for-tat with how much they make, a pitter-patter back-and-forth as they match wits and compare bank accounts. It's a 2005-era romantic comedy. Shit, it belongs to any era, it's an eternal conversation; it could have been Harry and Sally or Nick and Nora. It's just not filmed like a romantic comedy. Celine Song was absolutely the worst choice to direct this shit (but also the fact that she's there makes it at times better than it would have been though mostly it's worse for her presence). Take the script, exactly as it is, and it works better in a comedy director's hands. Each actor here is doing some of the most mediocre work of their career, but they're all incredibly funny. Let Dakota Johnson be sarcastic, let Pedro be charming, let my boy Jake Wyler be, and let's roll. But Celine is still aiming for 'Past Lives', and would rather her frames be beautiful than tonally correct. [editor's note: I am saving this for a different review, but comedies can't be pretty.] And since the actors have to play into the director's sensibilities, they all become stilted and boring and blah despite the conversations they are having being interesting! (So it's not just that she chooses love, she chooses a more boring guy!) And as it approaches the end, you also realize that in order for this movie to work as scripted, it needs to be a Hollywood movie. She chooses love! Wow! But the conversation this movie is having is that money complicates the affection between two people, so it tries to achieve a simple lovely ending based on pure emotional appeal, but ignores the walls it's been framing up between them. And I liked the ending!! It was the most 'Past Lives'-ass part of the movie. The cave-people work! The final speech works! As emotional appeal. But it doesn't work as logical appeal, and I think the movie needed to find the thread that crossed between the two. It needed Harry running to the New Year's Eve party to tell Sally what he's figured out: not just an appeal, but revelation. And the speech has to come from her, not him. Love has cost. What are you willing to pay?