# 28 Days (2000)

### reviewed by
David N. Butterworth

    28 DAYS
    A film review by David N. Butterworth
    Copyright 2000 David N. Butterworth

    ** (out of ****)

In preparing for my review of "28 Days," Sandra Bullock's new melodrama, I gatecrashed an AA meeting at which a young woman, probably not much older than Bullock's character, spoke for thirty minutes about her struggle with alcoholism. What this woman had to say or, perhaps equally importantly, the way in which she told her story, was absolutely fascinating. It was like watching Spalding Gray doing his "Swimming to Cambodia" thing. She kept going for thirty minutes straight with barely a pause. Her monologue was loaded with humor, pathos, and poignancy. It was filled with harsh truths, anguish, pain and suffering, yet is was somehow delightful. It was the kind of speech I wish I could have captured on videotape to replay over and over again to savor every heartfelt moment, every aspiration, every moving detail. "28 Days" is not like this. It's a well-meaning film about what it's like to have a Bud with your daily Wheaties but it's strictly AA Lite. Bullock plays a party girl who, after taking out a lawn jockey and crashing a limo into someone's porch during her sister's wedding, is sentenced to 28 days of detox in a rehab clinic. Here she gets with the program with a bunch of thinly-written caricatures of drug and alcohol abusers, many of whom are played by miscast performers (including Steve Buscemi as her counselor and Viggo Mortensen as a pro-baseball player with a love for the soaps). Bullock's character spends more time trying the break the rules than trying to quit drinking and as a result her month-end turnabout seems hurried and implausible. There have been some fine movies about alcoholism ("The Lost Weekend") and there have been some not-so-fine movies about alcoholism ("Leaving Las Vegas"). "28 Days," alas, comes closer to the latter. Bullock is good, and her relationship with her sister--played by Elizabeth Perkins--is excellent, but "28 Days" is still about 26 days shy of sobriety.

    --
    David N. Butterworth
    dnb@dca.net

Got beef? Visit "La Movie Boeuf" online at http://members.dca.net/dnb

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews