A feel-good comedy about drug and alcohol abuse seems a little incongruous.

 Director Betty Thomas and her star Sandra Bullock almost make it work in 28 Days.

 The abundant humour in 28 Days certainly makes the subject matter more immediately accessible than it was in films like Bar Fly, Clean and Sober and Days of Wine and Roses.

 Where those films captured the true pathos of battling addiction, 28 Days only hints at what must surely lie beneath the jokes, sniping and laughter of people trying to cope.

 Bullock plays Gwen Cummings, a successful New York writer who spends most of her time, energy and money getting drunk with her boyfriend Jasper (Dominic West).

 Her irresponsible behaviour reaches epic proportions at the wedding of her sister Lily (Elizabeth Perkins).

 Gwen eventually ends up crashing the wedding limo into a neighbour's home, earning herself 28 days in a rehab centre in lieu of a prison sentence.

 Fortunately, Gwen has enough money and clout to get into a country club-style hospital.

 Given the eccentricities of her therapy group, it quickly becomes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest without the bars or Nurse Ratched. It's these fellow addicts who provide the slapstick humour, romance and tragedy Gwen encounters.

 Alan Tudyk's gay disco dancer Gerhardt is outrageously hysterical, while Michael O'Malley's wealthy playboy provides more caustic, subtle humour.

 It's up to the frail and wispy Azura Skye, as Gwen's suicidal roommate Lily, to provide as much dramatic balance as possible.

 The same onus rests on Perkins, who must show how much suffering Bullock has brought to her and her friends and on Steve Buscemi as the former addict who now runs the facility.

 Bullock gets to react to the antics and sufferings of the other patients -- and she is an excellent sounding board. But her eventual triumph seems far too simple, especially given that Gwen has just a month to turn her life around.

 The film's best running joke involves a corny soap opera that proves as addictive to several of the patients as sex, alcohol and drugs.

 As she proved with Doctor Dolittle and The Brady Bunch Movie, Thomas knows how to pace comedy for maximum effect.

 She is not nearly as successful with 28 Days. It has few intensely dramatic moments, and they feel almost as melodramatic as the soap opera the film has such fun spoofing.

 All in all, 28 Days doesn't offer nearly enough insight into addiction and its hold on people, but it does deliver enough laughs to make it a pleasant diversion. A bit like Gwen's stay at the rustic rehab retreat.

(This film is rated AA)

More Movie Reviews