Tell me what you’re looking for in a ROM-COM. Let’s see if we can find a match! Romance? Comedy? Yes, of course. Those are non-negotiables!

Attractive stars playing cool characters? How about Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pescal and Chris Evans? (As Lucy, a professional matchmaker;  Harry, a financier; and John, a struggling actor, respectively.)

A “meet cute”? For sure. At a wedding reception, no less!

A reunion with a lost love? Yep! At that same wedding reception.

A damsel in distress? Well, one of Lucy’s clients, Sophie (Zoe Winters.)

A clever script with memorable declarations and observations about love and dating and marriage and money? We may have a match here!

Are you willing to overlook a horrible title and occasionally slow pacing? Materialists? Really? Couldn’t writer/director Celine Song have come up with a catchier title for her movie than that? Hey, you can’t have everything!

Surprises? Shhhhh! No spoilers!

Sexual content? A smidge. No nudity. Mostly post-coital chat and some F-bombs. Ergo, an R rating.

Seriously, Materialists is several notches above the average ROM-COM. 

The film has fun presenting a few of the candidates for matchmaking and their very specific qualifications about whom they’d consider for dating. 

Dakota Johnson is excellent as a 30-something woman who is smart and successful in her work matching up couples but has low self esteem regarding her own value as a mate.

The characters that Pascal and Evans portray are both honorable, likable men. Neither is the “bad guy” or the less-than-adequate guy who often appears in ROM-COMs to add to the tension.

Would Materialists be a good date film? I say yes. It would likely generate conversation for couples who are either casually dating or getting serious. 

The final shot of Materialists is pure genius. It comes as the end credits roll and the new Japanese Breakfast theme song My Baby (Got Nothing At All) plays. Followed by the hilarious John Prine and Iris DeMent duet In Spite of Ourselves.

Materialists runs just under two hours.