Finding Amanda is the story of a guy with a gambling addiction who goes to Las Vegas to convince his runaway niece to stop working as a hooker and go into rehab. Sounds like a pretty good role for someone like Steven Buscemi. But somehow Matthew Broderick is the one playing it.

Fully embracing the sad sack middle-aged loser persona, Broderick stars as Taylor, a man who has traded his drug and alcohol abuse for a gambling problem. When his wife finally has enough and kicks him out of the house, he decides to head for Vegas, where his niece Amanda is now living and working as a prostitute. Taylor figures if he can not gamble while there and convince Amanda to enter rehab, maybe his wife will take him back. But Amanda’s not too interested in turning her life around, and even a nun couldn’t go to Vegas and not gamble, so problems with the plan naturally ensue.

The movie is currently a part of the Tribeca Film Festival with no immediate wide release plans, so I’ll eventually RENT IT to see Ferris Bueller all grown up and dealing with his hooker niece.

Finding Amanda is rated R with an unknown release date. (IMDB site)

It seems like Helen Hunt has been pretty much MIA from the Hollywood scene for a few years, and now she’s making her return by pulling double duty as both the director and star of Then She Found Me. At least she’s been busy during her downtime!

Hunt plays a middle-aged woman who’s life takes a nasty turn when she realizes her chances of having a baby are quickly dwindling, her adoptive mother dies, her husband (Matthew Broderick) leaves her, and her birth mother with boundary issues (Bette Midler) shows up (if I found out Bette Midler was my real mother, I’d be having a pretty rough time, too). But things start to look better when she begins a relationship with Colin Firth (from Broderick to Firth; talk about an upgrade!). And of course her life takes another dip when in a moment of weakness she sleeps with her estranged husband, and it leads to a pregnancy. Now Hunt needs to figure out how to make things work with Firth, how to incorporate Broderick into the life of their child, and how to deal with her new overbearing and oversharing mother. Sounds like fun. Or maybe it just sounds trite and predictable. I’ll have to RENT IT to find out.

Then She Found Me is rated R and opens in limited release April 25. (Official site)