POV: Why Materialists feels like an early 2000s rom-com!

Celine Song’s latest project, Materialists, has been my new pop culture obsession and here’s why I think the movie makes me feel like rom-coms are back indeed!

What’s the perfect recipe for hitting the spot for an early 2000s rom-com? Firstly, you need an ambitious female lead who works in a place filled with women. She only wants to reach for the stars in her career and that very job eventually leads her to a man who swoops her off her feet. Just to add a little drama, there’s a long-lost love from the past who unexpectedly shows up to burst the little bubble she is living in. Not to forget the fact that the cast has to look drop-dead gorgeous, enough to pull you to the theatres. Celine Song’s latest project, Materialists, fortunately checks all of these boxes! After her success with Past Lives, which delved into the fact that not every two people who love each other are meant to be together, Materialists is her antidote to that. It feels like she is slowly uncovering different kinds of love that exist through her movies. 

Similar to early 2000s rom-coms like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, 13 Going on 30, Sex and the City and many more, Materialists is also set in the heart of New York, the concrete jungle where dreams are made of. It’s glamorous and dreamy where everyone’s putting themselves out there in the dating pool. But as Materialists unfolds further, you realize that it shows you the reality of modern day dating, building on the log line the film was sold on - How will you choose between the life you want and the love you need? Someone might be exactly the right person for you on paper, but it is the one who makes you feel right in your gut that your heart truly desires. It’s about the one you can be vulnerable with, as compared to the one you have to put up a performance for. That to me strikes the perfect balance between reality and fantasy, which a lot of these rom-coms did for me back in the day!

Also Read: Open Letter to BTS: The ones who came back as if they never left!

I also felt weirdly seen in Dakota Johnson’s character, Lucy. As someone who has also not had a lot in life financially, I have often caught myself saying things like ‘I’d rather marry rich and be secure’, but just like her, I feel torn between being rich in materialistic assets and being rich in love. Do I let my mind be at peace and experience comfort for once or do I build a future with someone whose heart stops the minute he listens to my voice? Materialists made me dwell on what I really expect from love and just like Lucy, it made me introspect if my want for having a stable future can come off as being shallow? 

And ultimately, it left me with dialogues that just pierced through my heart. I remember the pin drop silence in a housefull theatre during the climax when Chris Evans was saying the most romantic things a girl could ever ask for. I know I am watching something iconic on screen when I feel I am part of that world. A lot of these 2000s rom-coms did that to me and today, when the romance genre is at an all-time low, I have a lot more value for movies like this that come by and instill my faith in love and the fact that there’s someone for everyone out there! No matter how messy, insecure, broke or average we think we are, all of us, at some point, will meet the love of our lives who will look at us for who we are and not a math calculation of what we bring to the table!

P.S. I need Dakota Johnson’s entire wardrobe from this film so I can feel like a female lead in a rom-com at my workplace, STAT!

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