Primary navigation

USA 2000
Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
New York, the present. Gwen is good-time gal who traipses around the city with her equally lackadaisical boyfriend Jasper, getting very drunk and very loud. She sets the bedclothes on fire through carelessness, among other things. When Gwen ruins her sister Lily's wedding (while drunk she hijacks and crashes the bridal limo), she's packed off to a rehab centre where chanting and venting one's feelings are the order of the day.
Gwen rails at the centre's discipline (she's not even allowed to have painkillers), not to mention its 'touchy-feely' atmosphere. Before long Cornell, a no-nonsense counsellor, touches a nerve and Gwen is finally able to see her life needs to change. She begins opening up to her rehab-mates and engages in a mild flirtation with one of them, a sexy professional ball-player named Eddie. Gwen endures a measure of heartache when her roommate Andrea commits suicide. When her term is up, she returns home and faces the changes she needs to make (including splitting up with Jasper) in order to embark on her new drug- and alcohol-free life.
28 Days might very well be viewed as one of those movies that take an honest snapshot of what it's like to go through substance-abuse rehab - but that doesn't make it any good. Director Betty Thomas and screenwriter Susannah Grant (who's capable of sharp writing, if the recent Erin Brockovich is any indication) try hard to show us the transformation Gwen must undergo in order to change her life, but none of it clicks. Sandra Bullock injects the early part of the movie with a minor jolt of energy. She's most interesting when she's playing out the blithe selfishness people with substance-abuse problems inflict on others. It's funny when she shows up at her sister's wedding, dishevelled and with black bra straps showing beneath her pastel bridesmaid's dress. But it's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of her utter carelessness.
Once Bullock enters rehab, though, there's nothing to do but brace yourself for her initial resistance to it, which is of course soon to be followed by her total embrace of its philosophy. Along the way she is reconciled with her sister (the sadly underused Elizabeth Perkins) and recognises her addictions most likely stem from their mother's own substance-abuse problems. It's a wonderful, healing shock of recognition for her - bravo! But we saw it coming a mile away, and what do we get for our trouble?
Almost all of Gwen's revelations are like giant signposts rather than insights into some very deep-rooted problems. Anyone who's been through rehab in real life would be the first to tell you that there are no easy answers. But in 28 Days the most blatant realisations are treated as grand solutions. When Gwen screws up her leg and is forced to hobble around in a walking cast, her anger and frustration mount. Wise old counsellor Cornell knows just what to do: he hangs a signboard around her neck that says, "Ask me if I need help, and if I say no, give it to me anyway."
If pretty much all a movie character needs is a signboard to get to the root of what are, in real life, very subtle and difficult problems, it's safe to assume that character isn't getting much more than a good slathering of Hollywood gloss. When Gwen hangs a different signboard around the neck of her sensitive and ill-fated roommate (Drew Barrymore lookalike Azura Skye), it reads like nothing so much as a hamfisted Author's Message: "Don't ever be a slogan, because you are poetry."
That may very well be true: the poor girl is simply stuck in a movie that's a giant slogan - no poetry allowed here, because that would just be too messy. And people might be likely to miss the point, which is "Substance-abuse recovery is very very hard." 28 Days is not bad enough to ruin your life, nor is it good enough to change it even remotely. In any event, you won't need more than an hour to recover from it.