THE press show for this Sandra Bullock vehicle came rather more than 28 days ago, April 17 to be precise. Whereupon the Bullock bolted from the schedules, and nothing was seen nor heard of it until now, the Any Old Tat screen season when 22 days of men kicking an inflated bladder around the parks of the Low Countries holds sway.

Bounding Bullock, a limited actress with a surfeit of ill-directed screen presence, has made a pig's ear of choosing films since Speed, and now she has no one else to blame as she has moved into the production side of Tinseltown too.

A delayed release is never an encouraging sign and, even with a re-launch as a Chick Flick alternative to Euro 2000, 28 Days won't be around in another 28 days, on account of its unbearable stink of Hollywood cheese.

Smiling Sandra plays a kooky lush, New York writer Gwen Cummings, who doesn't know whether she's coming or going under the influence of the bubbly. This party animal spoils her sister's wedding, leaving the bridal limo as smashed as she is.

With her dissolute British boyfriend (Dominic West, oily as a sardine tin) merely encouraging her excesses, her family sends her for rehab, where Little Miss Feisty cuts an anything but anonymous figure at America's answer to Alcoholics Anonymous. Inevitably, self-obsessed Gwen kicks against the system, until learning lessons the hard way.

Like Winona Ryder with Girl, Interrupted, Bullock's intentions are no doubt honourable, removing the make-up, throwing up and the rest, but 28 Days tries to make the feel-good out of the feel-bad - the addicts and their assorted ailments.

The Hollywood airbrush turns them into a freak show; the script by Erin Brockovich's Susannah Grant aspires to be knowing but isn't, and director Betty Thomas favours the hyperactive, restless camera style that leaves you feeling as hung over as dippy dipso Gwen.

28 Days is cute when it should be acute, intensely annoying where it should be intense, stifling instead of warm, leaving poor Sandra dried up not dried out.