andy-cippico I watched this on the basis of the good reviews here and elsewhere. Unfortunately I never got into it. None of the characters were particularly likable, apart from perhaps Thomas Haden Church's character. Toni Collette's character seems to have no hesitation in sleeping with most men she either interviews or meets. It just didn't seem real - or does this sort of thing really go on? When things get tough for her she ends up smiling inanely, as if she now doesn't care.I'm a big fan of slow-moving films, as long as the story is good and the acting is strong. I struggled with this one, as both of these factors were missing for me. I didn't care about any particular character and I just didn't care if she found the missing musician or not. Don't get me wrong: the acting wasn't bad, especially when she finally meets the missing musician, but despite the surprise factor (I won't spoil it) it all falls a bit flat for me.

Elisabeth Irene When I decided to watch this title I was pretty convinced that it would be a good movie, because how on earth could a movie with Toni Collette, Thomas Haden Church AND Johnny Depp be a sucky one. I was right.It wasn't a movie that was all that special in the beginning, it builds up very slowly, but up to the point that the climax is so gratifying and so in the moment. I felt like I was there! The scene it was all built up to, where she finally gets to see Matthew. The walk from the car towards the fence seemed to be soooo long and I could feel the suspense and my heart beating faster and feeling it because I really felt like it was me, it was so familiar. The dreadful walk towards something that could be making or breaking. It's horrifying but all at the same time it could form such a relief because you know that after this you will know. You'll be certain of whatever it is you need to be certain of. But do you actually want to know what it is you're about to find out?That scene - and particularly that piece - was everything.

cetaylor3 Perhaps my biggest fascination with this movie was how it carried off its key theme, which (being the basis of the film's title) would seem to be blatant and yet, as I perceived it, not so. Other films have taken up the notion of celebrity as curse in a way that hits the viewer over the head far less subtly than "Lucky Them" manages. The link to the theme hinges first, on a line tossed off as a rueful aside by Ellie (Collette) upon learning of the predisposition of a wild, rare Galapagos Bush Baby - ironically captured and caged as a wedding gift - who Ellie feels for as being surely lonely, projecting a key element of her own trajectory, only to be told that Galapagos Bush Babies prefer to be "left alone." "Lucky them." Indeed - and if only. The price for not being left alone by invasive, self-serving humans is that the bush baby winds up dead, apparently of gift-wrapped suffocation. Second, when we finally come, as Ellie does, face to face with the elusive-and-mostly-presumed-dead mystery protagonist in the story's plot line, the nearly wordless sudden release of mystery and tension, comes as if a hot air balloon had been punctured, with a reverberating unstated "ohhhhhh" epiphany (of Ellie's) that some celebrities truly indeed are not kidding when they say they prefer to be "left alone." And we, like Ellie, are left to piece together the realization of just what lengths an exalted celebrity had to go to in order to find that preferred peace - faking his death, withdrawing from all public notice, yet still speculated upon in Elvis-like fashion as to sightings circulated by internet. Ellie's own life had lived out a flip side of that celebrity coin, where she has been unable to move on in the decade-plus in which she has been 'stuck' in the wake of that faked death, in part because she tried to get around (drink it away) rather than plunging through the haunting mystery and sense of abandonment. When she has finally succeeded in tracking down the mystery, the 'aha' moment includes the realization that the escape via faked death was an exercise of free-will that wasn't personal (the irony echoes that she'd told upcoming celebrity Lucas that her standoffishness "wasn't personal"). She must finally see the abandonment on its merits and we sense her almost instantly respect it for what it was meant to be and to accomplish - and so now she "fakes" her write-up accordingly so as to honor his free will to have the life he chose. It seems that this choice by Ellie now shows up in her own demeanor before her editor with the fake story in hand. It seems that we leave Ellie suddenly seeming at peace with herself and with a better chance at becoming her own version of a "lucky them" than she has ever known: more irony: a fake story covering up a fake death may have given her too a chance to start a new chapter.While that mystery and damning sense of having been abandoned as some kind of indictment on her had persisted, the Ellie we've witnessed throughout the film had shown the restless angst of someone who does not feel in control of her life's path but rather darts after deus ex machinas of sorts (mostly in the form of convenient lovers). Now, seeing with profound clarity how her long-lost lover had regained control over his destiny on his own terms in the most reversal-of-course kinds of ways, she seems to have caught a glimmer and inspiration for what it takes and means to regain control over her own destiny.So, as I see it, the film is ultimately a fresh take on a recurrent filmic treatment of life's priorities – and of the follies or shallow unfulfilling rewards of what is thought of materially as "success." But it's an existential treatment here that reminds that even the most stuck-in-success of celebrities has a choice - and not the self-destructive choice of an Elvis opting for what would seem to have been a slow suicidal escape from limelight through overindulgence but one that was affirmative of an alternate existence honoring one's true self that had gotten lost in such limelight. That the lead character worked for a magazine whose raison d'etre was capitalizing on limelight and "success," seeking stories that twist their way into notoriety - and that she was edited by a man (Platt) so immersed in that definition of life that his own need for escape (into pot) was depicted as addictive and consuming - served to add irony to the message, given that the film positions us from the outset to accept their occupational goals as legitimate lenses through which to see the story and to seek the demystification of the iconic, disappeared celebrity. It's through the lead character's combined professional and personal converging epiphany that she and we come round to the existential reminder that what gets lived out (by any of us) as if irreversible fate can be altered by an exercise of free will.

lmiller4 The DVD was finally released so I had a chance to see the movie. I wanted to see it primarily because of the superb cast and I wasn't disappointed by a single one of them. But I do wonder how they got the 8 figure salary Johnny Depp to play a bit role. The story didn't move me partly because the characters weren't fleshed out. One sentence or two was all the viewer was given in the way of background. Tom Hayden's character for instance is wealthy but is he really the buffoon who would marry a hooker who is secretly married and blatantly seeking to make Hayden's character become more materialistic? Johnny Depp's character is described as a "shit." Why? We're never told. It's really a tribute to the cast that this movie exists and damn near works.