My name is Bob and I am a recovering negative guy.

 Previously, I would've considered Sandra Bullock's 28 Days a sitcom trivializing substance abuse.

 Y'know, like it's some ambitiously naive TV hybrid of Friends Recovering From A Lost Weekend, Third Snort From The Sun and Sex Addicts In The Middle.

 Optimistically, I believe 28 Days, written by Susannah Grant, wants to be more. It wants to have a brain, a heart and the courage to be funny.

 All this occurs when a writer (Bullock) finds herself sentenced by a judge to end her drugs-and-alcohol act after she embarrasses her sister (Elizabeth Perkins) at her sister's wedding. She does that by ramming the bride's limousine into a nearby house. That ol' thing.

 When Bullock's zoned-out gadfly Gwen arrives at Camp Clean Up, her serious situation is obvious to everybody but her. And that's when the comedy begins. Natch.

 The self-help circle of friends become mini-comics doing sketches-are-us exercises. Oh, those uproarious days of shakes, rattles and role-playing.

 There is Gerhardt (Alan Tudyk), the gay Germanic dancer with a speech impediment and crippling shyness. Bobbie Jean (Diane Ladd) is Auntie Lame.

 Roshanda (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a cocky control freak. Oliver (Michael O'Malley) is pragmatically hetero, and Andrea (Azura Skye) is the Gothic girl who shares her passion for a soap opera with a handsome hunk pro baseball player (Viggo Mortensen). Better is Steve Buscemi as Cornell the concerned counsellor.

 Missing are aliens, and a partridge in a pear tree. Present and accounted for are a sudden death by OD, memories of the way they were and lots of tears.

 Adding alleged realism are depictions of being down and out by the consistently steady Bullock. These include a few drunken relapses thanks to her visiting cad boyfriend (Dominic West), some hand twitching and one late night of toilet hugging. It's more like she has a pesky flu than DTs.

 Other non-comedy bits? Director Betty Thomas offers grainy flashbacks recalling Gwen's childhood with an alcoholic mother.

 And then there's the conclusion when Bullard's Gwen returns to her old stomping grounds 28 days later with a new attitude to begin her daily fight. It counts as a fitting way to finish.

 Instead, Thomas' 28 Days chooses to leave us laughing -- not wondering -- with a contrived and coincidental freeze-frame meeting between Gwen and Gerhardt.

 It's self-revealing, self-serving and just plain sitcom-like.

 I'm positive about that.

(This film is rated AA)

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