Cringefest. How many times did I roll my eyes while watching this? About 20. One of the worst movies I have seen this year.

Celine Song of the famed (and overrated) Past Lives (2023) returns with a romantic comedy released by the indie studio A24. 

Set in New York City, there is nothing romantic or funny in this schlock piece of cinema. The entire film has undertones of comedy, the icky kind. Like a Saturday Night Live parody cloaked in grainy A24 indie aesthetics. Maybe if Greta Gerwig or Noah Baumbach had written this, it could have worked.

Our anti-heroine is Lucy, played by Dakota Johnson, whose beautiful face is overshadowed by a strange, breathy bedroom voice. It is the year 2025 and she works for a matchmaking company called, wait for it, Adore.

Lucy is also a scammer who believes “love is easy” because “it just walks into our lives sometimes.” Her job is matching people based on superficial criteria, a premise ripe for satire but squandered.

Adore has a physical office with mostly female workers who recruit singles afraid to die alone, matching them according to a checklist: race, education, salary and age. You know, the “math” or formula of romance.

I guess these are for people who have given up on dating apps and prefer complete strangers to match them with someone, with no contract stating that if you are assaulted, it is the risk you take, and Adore has no legal responsibility.

In real life, people are matched by friends and colleagues, people who know you. In Song’s unrealistic realm of modern dating, the clients either have no friends, are creeps, or are simply rich enough to pay Adore for a checklist.

By the way, Adore is also who people call, not 911 in New York City when they have a stalker. It also claims to be “better than your therapist.”

Lucy is pegged as a materialistic social climber, but we are told this, not shown. It is Lucy herself, in that ingratiating whispery voice, who announces her “profile” that screams red flag. The corniest part of the materialism is the dialogue. Lines like “achingly wealthy” and “unicorn” to describe the “rare perfect man” are cringey throughout. At one point, she even tells someone: “You are not a ‘catch,’ because you are not a fish.”

The film gets mildly interesting when it touches on marriage as an economic or transactional proposition. Only, it is so predictable that, of course, love conquers all. 

You can predict the ending right from the beginning when Lucy is faced with two romantic options: Harry (Pedro Pascal), the obscenely rich “unicorn,” and John (Chris Evans), the insanely handsome, perpetually broke theater actor whose love language is acts of service.

The only interesting parts are the direct-to-camera interviews with clients, which give the audience insight into class snobbery and ideology. There is one good scene where a bride gets cold feet, and Lucy, the Adore matchmaker-cum-therapist, delivers some pep talk and introspection about the scary reasons people marry when it is not for love.

The problem is that Song’s cultural sensibilities are not authentically rooted in New Yorker nuances. Born in Korea, emigrated to Canada, and only moved to New York to study, there is a cultural dissonance when portraying New Yorkers.

There is a visible effort to craft New Yorker wit and romance, but it fails miserably. Characters talk unnaturally because of the unnatural script; they all sound robotic and wrong. When Pedro Pascal bends down to a height of 5’6” because his character had limb-lengthening surgery, it is not adorable, cute, or funny. It is contrived.

Past Lives, at least, had more interesting dialogue and was redeemed by its ending. The Materialists feels like it is struggling for some dark humor, and it is head-scratching how this is categorized as a rom-com. It is laughable, but not funny.

It aims to be a charming, profound, and incisive exploration of modern dating, but ends up as a formulaic story with spectacularly corny dialogue and convenient plot devices that test the brain and ears. It feels like watching a parody disguised as a sophisticated New York romance.

Lucy is not even the adorable, endearing female arsehole archetype that could have elevated the film. She is just bland. At least the movie says that even if you are a red flag like Lucy, you are still lovable. Yes, there is hope for red flags.

0.5 out of 5 stars

Now showing in Philippine cinemas