28 DAYS (2000) --Marty N. and Angela1, submitters                     

Synopsis:

Writer character Gwen (Sandra Bullock) joins the usual ensemble suspects in more than their fair share of rehab hijinks.  Mostly predictable and familiar (take what little you can use and leave the rest, which is a lot of it), the movie nevertheless has a few good moments – as when, at the end, Gwen realizes she is going to have to choose between her sobriety and her pre-recovery boyfriend. 

LSR “28 DAYS” Review {link to review by Marty Nicolaus}

Internet Movie Database “28 DAYS” reviews:

http://us.imdb.com/TUrls?COM+0191754

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{LINK TO THIS REVIEW; DON’T INCLUDE REVIEW IN BODY OF DESCRIPTION) “28 DAYS” review by Marty Nicolaus

Twenty-Eight Days is the fictional story of one woman’s experience in “Serenity Glen,” a 12-step residential inpatient treatment facility in a rustic East Coast setting.  The heroine, Gwen, played by Sandra Bullock, winds up there as an alternative to a jail term after drunkenly stealing her sister’s wedding limo and crashing it into the front porch of a house.  She begins in defiance of facility rules and in denial of her problem, and persuades her party-boy boyfriend (Dominic West) to bring her Vicodins.  Promptly busted for the drugs, she is scheduled to go off to jail the next day.  That night she falls out of a tree trying to get at her remaining pills, and for some unexplained reason the rules are bent and she is permitted to stay.  She then begins to accept that she has a problem.  She begins to engage with her fellow patients and to show empathy and concern for some of them.  Along the way she gains insight into her troubled relationship with her sister and they effect a reconciliation.  When she completes her stay, she returns to the scene of her former life filled with good intentions. 

This movie has a lot of earmarks of a 12-step infomercial, but it doesn’t work.  Although Sandra Bullock does a creditable job with the material, the script is thin, filled with incongruities, and tends to wander into subplots that go no place.  Worse, the supporting characters – mainly the other patients – are mostly caricatures.  In the case of the one openly gay character, the treatment will strike many viewers as patronizing and offensive: he’s maudlin, immature, and a low-watt bulb.  The facility’s therapeutic practices are heavy on compulsory holding hands, chanting AA slogans, and being made to feel ashamed and guilty.  Cigarettes and candy are allowed and abundant, but Gwen is not permitted pankillers -- not even aspirin - for her sprained ankle.  Relapse is shown as common, and we can sort of see why.  Steve Buscemi, as Gwen’s aloof and repressed chain-smoking case manager, gives her a cigarette, the Big Book, the threat of jail, and a humiliating neck sign she has to wear, in that order, and not much else.  His advice, as speaker at an in-house AA meeting, is that patients abstain from sex for at least two years after getting sober.  In the final scene, Gwen takes a mysteriously unattended NYPD horse as her higher power, dumps her boyfriend, and embraces the stereotyped, silly gay character. Where is this going?  This strained, semi-comical film is unlikely to get people with drinking problems lining up to enter the Serenity Glens or to attend AA meetings.  Hopefully one day a film will portray a real secular alternative.  }

You can buy 28 DAYS from Amazon here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/102-9639967-0193748

Internet Movie Database reviews (includes Ebert and many others):

http://us.imdb.com/TUrls?COM+0191754