This is the movie’s overstated opening, and its uncertain tone–pitched sloppily between farce and nightmare– doesn’t bode well for what is to come. Director Betty Thomas and writer Susannah Grant (“Erin Brockovich”) want to rehabilitate the overly familiar rehab drama (“Clean and Sober,” “When a Man Loves a Woman”) by injecting it with a streak of gallows humor. It’s a good idea in theory, but it requires more than synthetic sitcom humor. The laughs in “28 Days” are designed to distract us from the subject, not illuminate it. This is a movie afraid of its own shadows.
D.A.
28 DaysColumbia Opens April 14
