In the movie Finding Amanda, Matthew Broderick plays Taylor Peters, a middle-aged TV-writer currently in recovery from the alcohol and drugs that got him fired from his last show, and unsuccessfully hiding the gambling habit he refuses to give up. Brittany Snow plays his 20-year-old niece Amanda, a beautiful young woman with a new house, a new car, and an income funded by none other than the thick wallets and unashamed sexual appetites of men up and down the length of the Vegas strip.

Soon after the movie begins, word makes it back to Amanda's family that she is working as a hooker. The same day, Taylor's wife finds ticket stubs from the track he swears he hasn't gone to in months. And of course, Taylor does what any man in his position would—he goes to Las Vegas to both rescue his niece from her sordid life and prove that he is done with gambling for good. Jump right into some of the most awkward uncle-niece moments ever and the reality that our best intentions never work out quite as nicely as we plan; and so unfolds the story of an addict uncle, a hooking niece, and the difference between what we let define us and who we choose to become.

As you might suspect, Taylor's determination to hold his own against the Vegas pits lasts about five seconds. Although both Amanda and Taylor recognize that their lifestyles have their downsides, letting go of their upsides is not something either of them is ready to do. In a world where most people hate what they do for work anyway, Amanda figures her work is no worse than anyone else's. And even in those moments where the reality of what she does is enough to make her cry, as she puts it, there are just some things that define you for the rest of your life. "You could stop," she says. "But really, what's the point? You're always going to be that girl on her knees on the bathroom floor."

At the beginning of the movie, the therapist that Taylor is seeing asks him why he bets on horses. His answer,: "I guess I like the challenge of it&ellips; There's nine races and thousands of possibilities." And as I watched the rest of the movie, I couldn't help but think that it, too, was about the appeal of possibility. But where the options that draw Taylor to the track are ones rooted in pure chance, as the movie continues, the outcome that we see him seeking more and more is one that is guaranteed. And where Amanda is only able to understand the potential of her life within a framework that she cannot change, with eager hands offering her the chance to change for almost the entire movie, the message is that if we so choose, there is always a way out.

But for both Amanda and Taylor, the problem they face is getting past nothing other than who they see themselves to be. Although Taylor keeps telling everyone around him that he is better than what they think, he just cannot seem to make his life match his words. Even though her entire family keeps telling Amanda that she is better than what she does, Amanda is just not able to see that. But as much as Taylor does not want to give up his own destructive habits, he is able to see what Amanda cannot. And in the end, it is by seeing himself through the eyes of love that Taylor's belief in who he could be actually becomes real enough to make a difference.

Continue: 1 2