Sandra Bullock stars as a drunken, drug-addicted journalist forced into rehab in this patchy film about facing up to your problems and your sobriety.
There's much to enjoy in the film and it's really only let down by the poor ending and how the film states Bullock's addiction is everybody's fault but her own.
That is especially hard to swallow in the relationship between Bullock's character and her sister and in the penultimate moments about coming out of rehab (the 28 days of the title) and back into your old life.
Bullock acts very well and manages to play the drunken scenes as both funny and frightening but she's let down by the workmanlike feel to the story. You know the fate of every character the moment you see them and at times the film comes close to the melodrama that it satirises in the fictitious soap opera one of the characters is addicted to.
Writer Susannah Grant fashions many good characters and moments but the script doesn't have the pace of her one for "Erin Brockovich" and instead is more like a television drama (and Grant was a producer on teen series "Party of Five"). Betty Thomas, still perhaps best known for acting in "Hill Street Blues", exploits the story well yet there's a lack of confidence in it that stops the film ever going too far into drama or too far away from comedy.
Do see it for Bullock's performance but don't for Steve Buscemi's. He's fine, but despite star billing he's barely in the movie at all.