28 Days

A pill-popping alchoholic (Sandra Bullock) goes into rehab at a country retreat, where her sneering I-don’t-need-to-be-here attitude gets its inevitable comeuppance. Susannah Grant’s predictable script alternates between banal platitudes about chemical dependency and snide jokes at the expense of the chemically dependent patients, then wraps it all up with a warm-and-fuzzy group hug. Betty Thomas’ direction is as facile and shallow as Grant’s script—they should have rented Stuart Saves His Family to learn how to find comedy in a situation like this without ridiculing the characters. Bullock does give a nicely modulated performance, and there is a strong supporting cast (Diane Ladd, Viggo Mortensen, Elizabeth Perkins, Reni Santoni, Steve Buscemi)—although most of them are given too little to do.