Yesterday morning in a nearly empty theater, I saw Materialists, starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal, and written and directed by Celine Song. This is Song’s second feature, after the Academy Award nominated Past Lives. I enjoyed this film quite a bit and I laughed a lot (which can be quite awkward when not many others are in the room laughing along with you). It may take another viewing, though, to fully understand why I was laughing.

Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a failed actress turned professional “high value” matchmaker, who swears she’ll stay voluntarily single unless she can hook up with a rich guy. She is forced to choose between a fantasy romance with a wealthy and charming man (Pedro Pascal) and reconnecting with her struggling actor ex-boyfriend (Chris Evans).

The film is marketed as a subversion of romantic comedy tropes. Although very entertaining, Materialists is not quite that. It also doesn’t quite go hard enough with its cynicism to become the Robocop of rom-coms, although there are a few moments where it almost feels like it.

Lucy and the agency she works for, Adore, make their money exploiting the childish materialism of the extremely affluent, while making fun of their clients’ outlandish standards and expectations behind their backs. I sat in the audience laughing at these people and at Lucy, and at all the times they mentioned that a man’s value on the dating market is determined solely by the size of his bank account, whether his height is over 6 feet tall, and whether he has a body like a comic book superhero.

It’s hilarious to me to listen to people reduce the prospect of romance to such shallow standards, because these so-called “adults” are really just overgrown children who never emotionally or intellectually matured past middle school age. It reminds me of the time in middle school when a classmate told me very explicitly and without a hint of irony that I’d be more socially acceptable if my parents could “just” afford to buy me more expensive clothes.

Some people just don’t grow out of this mentality. Much of the online dating scene these days is a cesspool that’s populated by people who are either severely broken emotionally, desperately swinging for the fences way out of their league, or looking to jump straight from a trial separation to a rebound relationship to piss off their toxic ex. In this way, I think Materialists really succeeds in showing the rest of the world what those of us who have permanently abandoned the online dating scene have known for a long time – the matchmakers and dating sites do not care about your feelings, they want your money, and they will use whatever type of emotional exploitation tactics available to keep that desperation cash rolling in. If I hadn’t already sworn off match.com and the rest of those sites years ago, I’d have canceled my subscription right after leaving the theater.