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Grade: C+

Verdict: A well-meaning but uneven look at addiction and rehab.

Details: Starring Sandra Bullock and Viggo Mortensen. Rated PG-13 for substance abuse, profanity and some sensuality. 1 hour, 43 minutes.

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Review: If you ever wanted to see Sandra Bullock looking less than her perkiest, "28 Days" is your movie. It's designed for all the people who've been waiting to see cinema's chipper girl next door go clean and sober.

The big question is, who are those people?

Written by Susannah Grant ("Erin Brockovich"), "28 Days" is named for a four-week stretch at a rehab center, to which party girl Gwen (Bullock) is court-sentenced. That's because she capped a day of wasted partying at her sister's wedding by driving the newlyweds' getaway limousine into the side of a house.

Gwen not only has to battle withdrawal symptoms, but culture shock after she goes from New York City to a woodsy rehab center, where the patients seem to be in a perpetual group hug, or chanting slogans or singing "Lean on Me."

You might think that director Betty Thomas ("The Brady Bunch Movie," "Dr. Dolittle") is trying to get all the 12-step clichés out of the way up front, scoring points off the easy jokes before easing us into a deeper look at the recovery process. But the movie never shakes off its jokiness, even as we follow Gwen's slow, reluctant decision to drop her defenses and admit she needs help.

Bullock does the best she can to anchor the movie's too-many moods, and she pulls off several delicate emotional scenes. The supporting cast members don't come off nearly as well; they're a two-dimensional chorus backing Gwen's journey. You have to wonder what drew Oscar nominees Diane Ladd and Marianne Jean-Baptiste to a project that reduces them to just a couple of faces in Bullock's support group. Steve Buscemi is also underused. Dominic West as Gwen's reckless, enabling boyfriend, and Viggo Mortensen as a star baseball pitcher whose addictions include sex, have their moments. Azura Skye does sweet work as Bullock's teenage-junkie roommate. Alan Tudyk offers steady, if stereotypical, comic relief as a German gay addict desperate for a boyfriend; his stream-of-consciousness monologue about forks is one of the movie's comic highlights.

"28 Days" isn't an appalling clinical "comedy" like Patch Adams. It's a professional, appealing comedy-drama, but in trying to be all things to all viewers, it never really comes into focus.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service