28 Days [DVD] [2000]

To appreciate 28 Days, it's best to be thankful that director Betty Thomas hasn't forced Sandra Bullock into a remake of Clean and Sober. Instead Thomas has balanced her comedic sensibility (evident in Dr. Dolittle and Private Parts) with the seriousness of alcoholism and substance abuse, and she succeeds without compromising the gravity of the subject matter. Some critics have scoffed at the movie's breezy, formulaic portrait of 27-year-old boozer and pill-popper Gwen Cummings (Bullock), but this smooth-running star vehicle does for Bullock what Erin Brockovich did for Julia Roberts, focusing her appeal in a substantial role without taxing the limits of her talent. It's no wonder that Susannah Grant (who wrote both films) was one of the hottest new screenwriters of 1999. She writes "Hollywood Lite" without insulting anyone's intelligence.

As played by Bullock, Gwen is an alcoholic in denial whose latest bender with boozer boyfriend Jasper (Dominic West) ruins the wedding of her sister (Elizabeth Perkins) and lands her in a month-long rehab program with the requisite gang of struggling drunks and junkies. Newcomer Alan Tudyk steals his scenes as a gay German rehabber who might've dropped in from a Berlin performance-art exhibit, and Steve Buscemi aptly conveys the weary commitment of a counsellor who's seen it all. Thomas has surrounded Bullock with a sharp ensemble, and the addition of singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III (as a kind of Greek chorus crooner) is sublimely inspired. Certainly no surprises here--the warring sisters will reconcile, and at least one rehabber will fail to recover--but there's ample pleasure to be found in Bullock's finely tuned performance, and in Thomas's inclusion of flashbacks and tangents that add depth and laughter in just the right dosage. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

1.85 Wide Screen
16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
DVD 9
German
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 English German
Dolby Digital 5.1
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Gwen Cummings (Sandra Bullock - While You Were Sleeping, Speed) is a successful New York writer who's everyone's favourite party girl. Life to Gwen and her boyfriend, Jasper (Dominic West), is just a fun-filled exercise in debauchery; stumbling from bar to nightclub to hangover, until Gwen's alcohol fuelled display at her sister Lily's (Elizabeth Perkins - Crazy in Alabama, The Flintstones) wedding results in a drunk-driving charge and a court order to spend 28 days in rehab.

Determined she does not belong, Gwen refuses to conform to the unique set of rules and rituals she is faced with. It's only through the relationships she forms with the other patients and her counsellor, Cornell (Steve Buscemi - Big Daddy, Desperado) that she begins to realise that there may be more to life than being the life and soul of the party.