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Like its protagonist Gwen Cummings, 28 Days is a movie that
can't wait to get started and then doesn't know how to stop. It begins with a flurry of
drunken activity from party girl Gwen (Sandra Bullock, in her latest attempt to move away
from her girl-next-door image). She and her boyfriend Jasper (Dominic West) wake up late
on her sister's wedding day and kick off the morning with a couple of beers. After a boozy
cab ride, Gwen continues to get tanked up at the reception, offering an inappropriate
toast and falling through the wedding cake. On her way to purchase a replacement, Gwen
crashes her sister's car into a house and earns herself a twenty-eight day stay in the
Serenity Glen drug and alcohol rehabilitation center.
All of this happens in the first five minutes of the movie. What
follows is two parts unfocused clean-and-sober melodrama mixed with one part screwball
romantic comedy. Like the recent Girl,
Interrupted, it pits an "America's sweetheart" type against an
institutionalized group of oddballs, then carefully follows the formula that will lead her
back to civilization as a healthy, well-adjusted member of society. And like...well, any
other Sandra Bullock vehicle, it functions most effectively as a showcase for the star's
perky but slight charms.
In publicity materials for 28 Days, director Betty Thomas
expressed her desire to give the film a blackly comic edge - to make it a sort of M*A*S*H
Goes to Rehab. She came much closer to pulling off that tone in her 1997 adaptation of
Howard Stern's autobiography, Private
Parts. But there's no equivalent in 28 Days for the anarchic wit of
Stern and his cohorts; to the extent that it bears any resemblance to M*A*S*H at all, it is to the later, preachy episodes
of the series, not the still scathing and hilarious Altman film. As on the TV show, there
are comical P.A. announcements ("Tonight's lecture will be 'How many brain cells did
I kill last night?'") and Loudon Wainwright III shows up occasionally as a
guitar-strumming troubadour. Absent is any resemblance to a coherent satirical vision.
The screenplay by Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) is a sketchy one indeed, and how it
ever escaped its rightful home on the Lifetime network remains a mystery. The humor is
poorly integrated into what is essentially a weepy affirmation of detox dogma. Thomas
takes mocking potshots at the Twelve Step process - the buzz phrases like "use a
feeling word", the rituals of chanting and singing together - but they bounce off
harmlessly, as if launched from pea shooters. The rehab program itself is never sent up or
skewered, its positive results never questioned; thus the picture never builds up a zesty
anti-authoritarian head of steam. Instead, the lion's share of abuse is heaped on the
non-Sandra Bullock individuals enrolled in the program - the "freaks trying to get
sober in Deliverance country," as Jasper describes them. A motley collection
of sitcom refugees they are, each given one broad characteristic to distinguish him or her
from the pack and serve as the focal point for cheap gags. (Except for Gerhardt, played
with droll comic timing by Alan Tudyk: he's gay and a foreigner with a funny accent
- double the laughs!)
As for the romance, it's a non-starter. There's never any doubt that
Gwen's new life will have no place for fellow boozehound Jasper. This leaves us with Viggo
Mortenson, who appears to be channeling former Bullock beau Matthew McConaughey as
baseball star Eddie Boone, a sex and booze addict who befriends Gwen but never beds her.
After twenty-eight false endings - don't let that swell of music as Gwen drives away from
Serenity Glen fool you - 28 Days apparently reaches its predetermined running time
and screeches to a halt. This is becoming something of a trend in recent movies - Black and White and Rules of Engagement reach
similar narrative cul-de-sacs. In each case, we are left wondering: "If they were
just going to end this thing randomly - couldn't they have done it sooner?"
- Scott Von Doviak
