Lucky Them

It's not often that indie darling Toni Collette is upstaged, but in the hip yet also sentiment-drenched Lucky Them, star Thomas Haden Church's awkwardly brilliant performance as an eccentric millionaire and amateur documentary filmmaker shines brighter. In a scenario that sounds more like 1994 than 2014, Collette plays struggling rock journalist Ellie Klug, who writes for some sort of mid-level music magazine in a scrubbed-up post-grunge Seattle. Klug is a middle-aged burnout and near-alcoholic who walks around with a perpetual pout on her emaciated face and seems resentful of the fact that her straight-edged editor (played by Oliver Platt) wants her to do a story that people will actually want to read. Faced with imminent joblessness, Klug agrees to write about the mysterious icon Matthew Smith (also her ex-boyfriend) who vanished into thin air a few years previously. While hopping from one mediocre musician's bed to another for empty sexual encounters, she finally meets Charlie (Church), an independently wealthy filmmaker who wants to make a documentary about Ellie's half-cocked quest to find Smith. Unfortunately, the stellar acting by Church can't save what is essentially a one-dimensional movie bereft of dramatic innovation and inspiration. Optional. (M. Sandlin)