Her editor, Giles, (Oliver Platt) assigns Ellie to write a piece on Matthew Smith on the 10th anniversary of his disappearance which most people consider a suicide.

Ellie manages to come up with the money to bribe her source by going to Charlie (Thomas Haden Church), an awkward but wealthy socialite whom she had briefly dated in the past.

When he fails to show up for Charlie's wedding Ellie assumes he has left her and sleeps with another man only to have Lucas walk into her room late in the night.

She finally has a breakthrough when she realizes that all of Matthew's old issues of Stax were under his mother's name and discovers while looking through the database at work that the subscription was never cancelled but the delivery address was changed.

[10] Justin Chang of Variety said that "the truest and most meaningful chemistry [in Lucky Them] is generated by Ellie and Charlie, two individuals who are so fun to hang out with that they justify even the film’s flimsiest narrative setups".

[11] David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter said that the set-up was a little labored, "the performances are so engaging and the characters so pleasurable to be around that it's easy to forget the script's flaws".

[12] Tim Grierson of ScreenDaily called Lucky Them "largely a goofy comedy", but also said that "Griffiths gives the film a melancholy centre that's poignant without being overdone".

[16] Abhimanyu Das of Slant Magazine gave Lucky Them 2 out of 4 stars, saying that "the thinness of the material is only accentuated by the cast’s spirited efforts to pad it out".