Finding Amanda (2008)
38 %
Reviews Counted: 34 Fresh: 13 Rotten:21 Average Rating: 5.1/10
Consensus:
Despite a charming turn by Matthew Broderick, Finding Amanda is too flimsily executed to succeed as a dark comedy.
Runtime: 1 hr 36 mins
Theatrical Release: Jun 27, 2008 Limited
Box Office: $31,340
Synopsis: From director Peter Tolan, creator of the hit television series Rescue Me, comes Finding Amanda, a hilarious and heartbreaking autobiographical comedy about the compulsions we can’t shake, and the unlikely lengths we’ll go to while trying. Taylor Mendon (Matthew Broderick) is a... [More]
Genre: Comedies
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Brittany Snow, Maura Tierney, Peter Facinelli, Steve Coogan
Director: Peter Tolan
Screenwriter: Peter Tolan
Producer: Wayne Rice, Richard Heller
Composer: Christopher Tyng
Screenwriter: Peter Tolan
Producer: Wayne Rice, Richard Heller
Composer: Christopher Tyng
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Reviews
This unromantic comedy is something less than a sure bet. For some reason, you get the impression that it doesn't live up to the promise of its premise.
Comment
07/04/08
This vulgar film, replete with vile language and graphic descriptions of sex acts, degrades our culture. Even George Carlin might find it offensive.
07/03/08
Broderick’s sunny spin on the deeply flawed Taylor is interesting but eventually defies belief. In the third act, Finding Amanda loses steam altogether.
06/30/08
Top Critic
Though Finding Amanda's story reaches a reasonably satisfying conclusion, the empty characters at its center make the whole thing feel like a waste.
06/29/08
Doesn't have a nuance in it, but it's pretty consistently amusing in its latter-day Woody Allen way. For most of the way, its morals are happily, believably wrong, but all bad things must come to an end.
06/27/08
Finding Amanda has some of the good and a lot of the bad aspects of a first film written and directed by the same person.
06/27/08
Top Critic
Much of Finding Amanda doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, but at its best the still-boyish Broderick suggests his most famous character, Ferris Bueller, going through a midlife crisis.
06/27/08
Top Critic
Tolan writes regularly for smart shows like Rescue Me, but his best instincts deserted him when he set his sights on the big screen for the first time.
06/27/08
Top Critic
Written with more bite, the premise might hold up, but as executed here by Tolan, it is a soft-hearted, haphazard mess.
06/27/08
Top Critic
Writer-director Peter Tolan has glibness down pat, but can't quite wring the intended pathos from his characters' desperate lives. He does, however, give Broderick his best part since Election.
06/27/08
Too much of Peter Tolan's movie takes up Taylor's self-absorption as if it's actually interesting.
06/27/08
Set mostly in Las Vegas, Finding Amanda offers a vision of confused Americans losing their already shaky bearings in the world’s gaudiest honky-tonk.
06/27/08
Top Critic
This cloying comedy is barely enlivened by its talented stars who both deserve much better.
06/27/08
Amanda can never find a tone. It opens with a scene-reading (Taylor is a writer on a hacky TV show) that produces yawns, where our lead character is the only one that laughs. It's prophetic.
06/27/08
The familiar premise here has sharp fangs, unsparing wit and a knockout performance by Brittany Snow as the round-heeled 20-year-old.
06/27/08
A peculiar film, which is really two films fighting to occupy the same space.
06/27/08
Top Critic
"Finding Amanda" is little more than what "Hardcore" might have been like if it had been rewritten by the author of a dirty joke book--an idea that, come to think of it, is actually more amusing than anything on display here.
06/26/08
It can be done -- there are rich, sordid black comedies out there -- but Tolan doesn't quite pull it off.
06/26/08
Top Critic
An uncle watching his niece pick up a john should sting, not feel like we're meant to snicker at the uncomfortable look on Broderick's face.
06/26/08
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