Working as a television writer for a low-rated sitcom, Those McAllisters, Taylor Peters has developed a few vices, such as drinking, drug abuse and compulsive gambling, which have previously damaged his career to the extent that he takes sessions with an analyst only to prove to his wife Lorraine that he is seeking treatment.

[4] Ronnie Scheib of Variety wrote, "Matthew Broderick regains his cinematic stride as a morosely wise-cracking television producer on the skids, ably abetted by Maura Tierney as his much-put-upon wife and Brittany Snow as his perky prostitute niece".

"[6] Mick LaSalle of San Francisco Chronicle wrote that "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".

[7] Slant Magazine's Nick Schager called the film a "clumsy mashup of Leaving Las Vegas and Hardcore",[8] while Cynthia Fuchs of PopMatters mentioned that "Too much of Peter Tolan's movie takes up Taylor's self-absorption as if it's actually interesting".

[10] In a positive review, Stephen Holden of The New York Times called Finding Amanda a "viciously funny satire…[that] offers a vision of confused Americans losing their already shaky bearings in the world's gaudiest honky-tonk".