This week in theaters, we have a wide variety of new releases for just about every discerning cinema-goer. A new romantic drama, “The Materialists,” focuses on a complicated love triangle between Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal. Then there is another live-action remake of a beloved animated film (but this time someone other than Disney is joining the bandwagon) with Dreamworks’ “How to Train Your Dragon.” Finally, there’s a new Stephen King adaptation from Mike (“Doctor Sleep”) Flanagan, “The Life of Chuck,” but instead of monsters, it’s more interested in the heartbreaking minutia of an unexamined life.
I struggled with “How to Train Your Dragon” for several reasons, but two of them stick out the most to me. First, just like most of the rest of the live-action remakes, there’s no reason for this to exist. For a majority of the running time, “How to Train Your Dragon” is a near shot-for-shot remake of the animated film which is still a damn classic. The animation is gorgeous, the pacing and direction near flawless and the voice-acting is timeless. All this new one does is remind me that the old one exists and that I would rather be watching it.
The next big issue is the casting. Yes, it’s wonderful seeing Gerard Butler inhabit the role he voiced in the cartoon and Nick Frost is perfect as Gobber, but the film is fundamentally broken with the casting of Mason Thames as Hiccup. Maybe it’s just me, but Jay Baruchel’s awkward rasp as Hiccup in the original animated trilogy is flawless and builds that character beautifully across the three films. No one else stood a chance playing him, but Thames in particular feels so contemporary as an actor and as a young man, that every time he was onscreen, the spell of the film was broken and I was no longer in a world of Vikings and dragons. He just looks like an actor waiting to check his phone.
Toothless the Dragon is still beautifully realized and there are flying sequences that are stunning to witness, but a live-action remake of an animated classic that’s only 15 years old feels just a little too cynical to me. These remakes need a reason to exist other than the studios shamelessly reaching into the cookie jar. Still, this version of “How to Train Your Dragon” is probably going to make all the money in the world, so maybe we’re equally to blame as the Hollywood suits.
“The Materialists” is being advertised as a romantic comedy starring the always weirdly reserved Dakota Johnson, the always charming Chris Evans and the always thirst-trapping Pedro Pascal. Audiences might end up a bit disappointed, however, because, while there’s plenty of rom, there’s barely any com. This is actually the new film from Celine Song, whose previous movie, “Past Lives,” is one of the most subtly powerful looks at the road not taken ever made and “The Materialists” is another sneakily profound look at modern love and what it takes from us.
Dakota Johnson plays a wildly successful matchmaker who meets a sweet, rich “unicorn” in Pedro Pascal while still having unresolved feelings for her broke and struggling ex-boyfriend Chris Evans. That setup sounds like something that Jennifer Lopez or Kate Hudson would have starred in a decade ago, but under Song’s quietly devastating direction and achingly lonely screenplay, we have what amounts to a complete deconstruction of the romantic comedy and a bitingly pointed look at how hard it is to feel valued in a time where materialism can shape our own self-worth.
While “The Materialists” doesn’t quite have the same rich textures of emotion as “Past Lives,” I still found myself deeply introspective once the film ended and it re-contextualized how I viewed myself in a lot of ways. As someone who’s been single for quite some time, I struggle with understanding why I continually fail to find lasting love. The film realizes this about its audience and does such a lovely job at making us look at our cynical longings that it’s easy to miss the warm center that Song is trying to share: that each of us are individually valued in different ways and that the hope of someone discovering that value is what keeps us going. I’m not sure whether that’s cynical hope or brutal optimism, but “The Materialists” has more to say about humanity than I think I was ready for.
Finally, “The Life of Chuck” takes a non-linear look at a life from childhood to deathbed and how the Walt Whitman poem “Song of Myself” and its immortal line about humanity containing multitudes is more than a cliche or a platitude, but something we’re all worthy of realizing about ourselves before we die.
Cynical folk will watch “The Life of Chuck” and find it overly sentimental, while the gentle optimist might find the darkness at its center (as could only be conjured by Stephen King) a bit too much to be palatable. While ultimately existing as a statement about what it means to be alive, to love and be loved in return, I think the magic of this movie is going to hit everyone just the slightest bit differently. Whether you find it life-affirming and profound or solipsistic and obvious…that says more about who you are as a person on the day you watched it than it does about the film itself.
It worked on me. I found it spellbinding and the loveliest movie about what it means to be a human being since Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days.” Yes, there is corn and cheese and ham and all the nouns and adjectives in the world we use to describe something that wears its weeping heart on its sleeve, but there’s also truth here and it wouldn’t surprise me if “The Life of Chuck” ends up making a damn fine double feature with “It’s a Wonderful Life” a hundred years from now.
This article appears in Source Weekly June 26, 2025.
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