A Comedy About Rehab? Not Really

Gwen Cummings thinks being in rehab is one big joke. And no wonder. She’s in a movie that believes exactly the same thing.

“28 Days,” otherwise known as “ ‘Happy Days’ Checks Into ‘Wonderland,’ ” is a film with a jones for the obvious and an uncertainty about how seriously to take itself. Directed in breezy sitcom fashion by Betty Thomas, it wants to be real enough to get your attention but not too real to get in the way of the incessant wisecracks of Susannah Grant’s script. Eager to have it both ways, “28 Days” is too glib too often to make much of an impression any way you look at it.

That is in one sense a shame, because the film squanders an empathetic, watchable star turn by Sandra Bullock as grumpy Gwen. In theory, this could have been the kind of rewarding vehicle “Erin Brockovich” (also written by Grant) was for Julia Roberts, but where that film added texture to standard material, “28 Days” falls all over itself to make everything as simplistic as possible.

If anyone has any doubts as to how much of a party animal Gwen, allegedly a successful New York writer, really is, those are soon dispelled. With the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” pounding on the soundtrack, Gwen and her British boyfriend Jasper (Dominic West) get so wasted they nearly burn their apartment down before the opening credits are over. Now that’s some serious fun.

But wait, things will get even funner. Horribly hung over, Gwen and Jasper force themselves out to the wedding of her older sister Lily (Elizabeth Perkins), a stuffy type who just isn’t in on the joke and keeps muttering downer things like “You make it impossible to love you.”

Suffice it to say that Gwen commits such a wide and inclusive variety of atrocities at the reception and after (it’s not this film’s style to do anything by half measures) that a less than amused court orders her to spend 28 days in a rehabilitation facility.

That would be peaceful Serenity Glen, motto “Mind, Body, Spirit,” a cheery place that believes in chanting as much as any Hare Krishna, with people getting pumped up over slogans like “Hey, hey, what do we know, pills and booze have got to go” or the equally popular “Hey, hey, what do you say, being sober is the only way.”

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Gwen doesn’t enjoy what she calls the place’s “Romper Room” tone, and she doesn’t care for her counselor Cornell (a wasted, so to speak, Steve Buscemi), whom she lambastes as “a 12-stepping geek.” There’s nothing wrong with her, she insists, she doesn’t belong in rehab, she can control herself any time she wants to.

Gwen has even less regard for her buddies in group therapy, who as a general rule are not allowed to wander too far from the nearest wisecrack. There’s Andrea (Azura Skye), the teenage addict; Oliver (Michael O’Malley), who keeps ineptly trying to pick Gwen up; Gerhardt (Alan Tudyk), the painfully cliched gay man; and so on.

The only person not laughing at all these jokes is Gwen, and, for once, she’s right. For one of the problems with “28 Days” is not so much that it has the temerity to attempt the mixture of comedy and serious material, but that the comedy is so lame and the nominally weighty material is too obviously a setup.

More than that, if the therapeutic methods used by Serenity Glen are such a joke, how are we supposed to account for Gwen’s inevitable improvement? And why are we supposed to care when bad things happen to characters who have been presented as little more than cartoons?

Aside from Bullock, who is difficult to resist despite the mess surrounding her, “28 Days” has a few other interesting performances. British actor West works hard and successfully to turn boyfriend Jasper into a genuine person, and Viggo Mortensen is interesting as Eddie Boone, a womanizing star pitcher who watches a soap opera when he should be thinking about baseball.

That would be the mythical “Santa Cruz,” an intentionally silly bit of business about characters named Falcon, Deirdre and Darian. If the choice were offered, however, most “28 Days” viewers would as soon stick with “Santa Cruz.” At least it makes no bones about being a soap.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for mature thematic elements involving substance abuse, language and some sensuality. Times guidelines: some self-mutilation and a fatal drug overdose.

‘28 Days’

Sandra Bullock: Gwen Cummings

Viggo Mortensen: Eddie Boone

Dominic West: Jasper

Diane Ladd: Bobbie Jean

Elizabeth Perkins: Lily

Steve Buscemi: Cornell

A Tall Trees production, released by Columbia Pictures. Director Betty Thomas. Producer Jenno Topping. Screenplay Susannah Grant. Cinematographer Declan Quinn. Editor Peter Teschner. Costumes Ellen Lutter. Music Richard Gibbs. Production design Marcia Hinds-Johnson. Art director Bo Johnson. Set decorator Debra Schutt. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes.

In general release