28 Days

28 Days | |
| Director: | Betty Thomas |
| Cast: | Sandra Bullock, Steve Buscemi |
| Genre: | Film, Comedy |
Wouldn't you love to have heard the story pitch for this one? "Hey, any ideas for a new Sandra Bullock film?" "Sure! How about our girl as a drunk, pill-popping loose cannon who gets slapped into rehab for 28 days?" Hilarious! Right. Penned by the currently hothothot Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich), 28 Days starts out loaded with edgy promise, as Bullock is entirely credible as Gwen Cummings, a nonstop party girl/writer who's literally headed for a hell of a crash. To escape a jail sentence, Cummings ends up at the unbearably chirpy Serenity Glen Clinic. And it's all downhill from there, as the film slides into Girl, Interrupted meets The Bad News Bears. It must be hell for Bullock, who despite her cutie-next-door charm has always harbored a brooding streak of melancholy that no one in Hollywood seems willing to let her develop on-screen. Despite a few tense moments and a promising supporting cast (the best being Cummings' hard-partying boyfriend, played by Dominic West, a barely recognizable Diane Ladd, a prettied-up Viggo Mortensen, and an utter waste of Steve Buscemi and Marianne Jean-Baptiste), Bullock ends dunked in the saccharin yet again.