“Lucky Them” begins crisply as editor Giles (a sharp Oliver Platt) tells veteran music-critic Ellie Klug (Toni Collette) that her job with his Seattle magazine rests on her finding out the fate of a mysteriously vanished rock star; a somewhat unreasonable ultimatum given the rock star is also Ellie’s AWOL first love. But after teasing us with a promising premise, the movie becomes scatterbrained, the story meanders, Megan Griffiths' direction is predictable, and it’s a confusing drag to watch the talented Colette play a character who seems to lack both an energy to either let go of the past or to really hold onto it.

“It’s been a long time since anybody has written songs about me” says Ellie while her hunky, shirtless squeeze (Ryan Eggold) serenades her in bed with his guitar. Apparently her moroseness isn’t a turn off to him. In Ellie, Griffiths and screenwriter Huck Botko may have wanted to suggest a smart woman whose heartbreak is plaqued in apathy. Unfortunately, Ellie seems more like a moody teenager, ungrateful for the friends, musicians, and employers who thinks she’s more than the iconic man who left her ten years before.

The brand of self-destructive melancholy “Lucky Them” draws from Ellie gets on your nerves, but at least the movie doesn’t become unfunny. It’s worth recommending mainly for Thomas Haden Church. As an uncool business guy and amateur documentary filmmaker whose help Ellie enlists, Church gets some fantastic lines. “There’s a crispness to my writing that I enjoy” he says while signing a bill and creating charm out of self-praise. He's what you want out of a leading man: steadiness and surprise. The confident croak of his voice becomes an addiction for us. We keep waiting for Haden to show up and say things that might sound too obvious and frank, but feel good to hear---and unexpectedly, the game never gets old, even though the rest of  “Lucky Them” is a broken record.