Materialsts, now playing at Robinson Film Center, can be summed up in three words: Dating is hard.

OK, I will give you a few more words than that. In the film Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, a top-notch professional matchmaker in New York City. She is very good at her job for one reason — she treats relationships like commodities. She understands her clients expectations, and she knows how to find the value in another person for her clients.

In other words, Lucy will help you “check all the boxes” when it comes to finding a dating partner.

Lucy’s jaded approach is understandable after discovering that she lost a shot at love earlier in life when “the math didn’t work.” Then, at the wedding of two of her clients, she meets a man who checks all of her boxes. But she resists the relationship at first because she believes she doesn’t check all of his.

She is further rocked when a match she arranged goes horribly wrong. And when her unicorn isn’t necessarily the genuine article, she realizes that Mr. Right doesn’t always look like Mr. Right Now.

Materialists is a modern romance that reminds us that, in the end, because two people have hope, true love triumphs over checking all the boxes.

- Scott “Scooter” Anderson, Scooter Anderson Communications