Supposedly an elevated melancholic take on the 2000s era romcom/drama genre, Materialists is a pretentious, tonally inconsistent 'Sofia Coppola from Wish' production that constantly attempts to hide its lacking understanding of basic human emotions by hammering the audience on the head with poetic platitudes about the power of love in an era of superficial, transactional dating culture--backed, of course, by a generic dreamy soundtrack and visuals both as vapid as the film and the themes it presents themselves.
Ironically, Song's treatment of superficial dating culture never tries to actually dissect why such culture is prevalent, and is instead itself a shallow reinforcement of conservative/MGTOW takes and the pseudoscientific evolutionary biology notion of 'high-value' men and women, as we're constantly presented with (in what was surely intended as comic relief), men and women alike making ridiculous demands in their preferred partner. Men want young, fit girls; women want tall, rich men. Almost to counter any potential criticism thereof, Song introduces a #MeToo b-plot in which one of the lead's clients is assaulted, yet this serves no purpose but to fridge the victim for the lead's character development.
At no point does Song, in her writing, display any understanding of how humans interact either. None of the characters express any interests, nor have they friends and family to confide in. We're hammered on the head that Madame Web and Captain America are deeply in love yet neither the acting nor dialogue displays even the slightest sense of chemistry.
The lead's low self-worth and defensive attitudes in light of her lower-class background would have made for an interesting character study using the genre of romcom, but that would have required actual writing skill.
Speaking of which, given the script's hilarious misunderstanding of New York City economics despite the experience of class and poverty being fundamental to understanding two of the lead characters, it comes as no surprise that Celine Song, the daughter of two Korean artists, further married into wealth herself prior to moving to New York.
(Also this film is set in NYC, where Song now lives, but almost everyone is white, with the exception of a token black man in the wedding crashed by the lead?)