`28 Days’ fails to make recovery from light script> Bullock can’t save poor attempt at unearthing humor in addiction

In theaters

28 DAYS. Directed by Betty Thomas. Written by Susannah Grant. Running time: 103 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Betty Thomas’ “28 Days” isn’t for anyone who has undergone treatment for addiction; those people will smell a fraud within moments of this film’s wild, freewheeling, heavy-drinking start. They’ll be laughing for entirely different reasons.

The film is for those who want to see Sandra Bullock “cute” her way through another movie, those who are willing to forgive Sandy for looking adorable while she barfs into a toilet, falls out of a tree while in search of drugs, or slams a stretch limousine into the front of someone’s house after making a spectacular, drunken fool of herself at her sister’s wedding.

This curious bit of detox for dummies isn’t a terrible movie, it’s just terribly light. It’s unsure what to do with its material and it certainly doesn’t trust its audience to handle it, so it consistently makes trade-offs. It’s as if Susannah Grant, the screenwriter, said this: “If Sandy is going to projectile vomit, then we’d better counter that icky moment with some pretty sharp comedy.”

To the film’s credit, the comedy sometimes works, but in a film that considers getting split ends as having hit rock-bottom, who can take any of this seriously when Thomas decides to turn it all into a full-blown melodrama?

Bullock does her best to cross that line, but she’s constantly being undermined by a bunch of 12-step caricatures — a swishy gay German, a combative doctor, a heroin-addicted Goth-girl — whose presence makes it nearly impossible for the actress to transcend her bargain-basement Julia Roberts appeal and fully become her character, Gwen Cummings.

Peter Cohn’s “Drunks” did all this so much better. That film respected the addiction it showcased while also managing to find humor within the addiction. It drew audiences in because you sensed it never wanted to make a buck off alcoholism; it was smarter and more courageous than that.

Not “28 Days.” This cold turkey of a movie is so mechanized by formula, whatever it was trying to accomplish has been lost to a whitewashed predictability. Grade: C-

WHERE THE MONEY IS. Directed by Marek Kanievska. Written by E. Max Frye, Topper Lilien and Carroll Cartwright. Running time: 89 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Great cast, counterfeit script.

That’s the case with Marek Kanievska’s “Where the Money Is,” a caper that wastes its powerhouse of talent — Paul Newman, Linda Fiorentino, Dermot Mulroney — on a script so lifeless and rote, so flat and emotionally dead, audiences might wonder while watching the film when they’ll be permitted to view the body.

The film stars Newman as Henry, an incarcerated bank robber of a certain age who fakes a stroke so he can bust out of prison and move into the comparatively lighter security of a nursing home.

There, he meets Carol (Fiorentino), a smart, sexy nurse who not only sees through his otherwise convincing charade, but who realizes, when she learns about Henry’s past, that he might be her ticket out of this backwater town.

Married for years to her high school sweetheart, Wayne (Mulroney), Carol is ready for new experiences. Namely, she’s ready to spice up her life with a little less Nurse Do-Good, and a lot more “Bonnie and Clyde.”

Trading off Newman’s performances in “The Sting,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Color of Money,” “Where the Money Is” never matches their greatness; Kanievska doesn’t even try to. This is his first feature film since 1987’s “Less Than Zero,” and it shows. He’s so out of the loop, he becomes a director directed by his cast. He has no script, so he’s forced to rely on Newman’s bankability and Fiorentino’s sexpot reputation to carry a story in desperate need of crutches.

At least he has those performances. In spite of being confined to a wheelchair for half the movie, Newman is still vital; he can say as much with a raised eyebrow as Fiorentino can say with a raised skirt.

In this film, those are the moments to get excited about. Grade: C+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Monday and Thursday in the NEWS, Tuesday and Thursday on WLBZ’s “NEWS CENTER 5:30 Today” and “NEWS CENTER Tonight,” and Saturday and Sunday on NEWS CENTER’s statewide “Morning Report.”