28 Days (Wide Screen) > Reviews > She Was The Life And Soul Of The Party

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Outstanding
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Standard
How does it compare to similar films?	Outstanding

Advantages:	Excellent Everything
Disadvantages:	Cant think Of one This Minute

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The Story
Gwen is the ultimate party girl, she the first to arrive to the party and the last to leave, alcohol and drugs are just part of life for her until the day of her older sisters wedding, which she single handily ruins, by wrecking the cake, making several embarrassing speeches and just basically being a pain in the ass. So on her travels to find a cake replacement, she loses control of the wheel and smashes into a house. In court she is ordered to either spend time in prison, or have 28 days in Rehab, she naturally opts for the rehab. For the first week, she doesn't participate in discussions, doesn't clean her dorm or make friends with any of her fellow addicts, until she realises just how all consuming her addiction is, and starts to remember how her mother died, she herself being an addict. As the days press on she starts to participate more, making friends and facing up to the fact that she has a problem. These 28 days are days of enlightenment, self discovery, joy sorrow, despair, love and hate. But she gets, through it, it takes work but she gets through it.

Performances
• Sandra Bullock puts in a tremendous performance as Gwen, she is an addict, and Sandra portrays the feelings of despair and joy that come with rehab, I would say that this is her finest hour, a real treat. Heart breaking emotionally bonding, unmissable and brilliant
• Vigo Mortensen is well not much of an actor is he, he’s good at fight scenes, he’s something for all the women to look at but he’s not much of an actor. But I have to say that this is one of his better performances, at least he’s pretty convincing, anyway he’s hardly in it and his character has nothing to do with the plot.
• Although Sandra Bullock is fantastic as Gwen, Elizabeth Perkins is the real star of this one. As Lily she plays a cute 17 year old cocaine addict, who has serious problems with her mother. Her performance in this is honestly one of the best ive seen. She plays this role with real vulnerability. Such an excellent performance from just a teenagers astounding
• Alan Turdyk is hilarious as the over emotional, over camp, over the top Gerhart, really funny and witty.

Quality Of The Script:
The main reason that the performances in this film are so great is because the script is wonderful, it doesn’t shove, crying, and self loathing and all these other raw emotions down your face, it’s much more subtle than that, although there are some scenes that are extremely sad. It smooths over the raw emotion with humour, which does a good job, but underneath it all, the audience gets more and more into Gwen addiction and why its there. And it’s not just Gwen that you become connected with, I also like the fact that you become emotionally bound with the supporting cast too. A wonderful Script.

Production Valus
I wouldn’t say that 28 days has extremely high production Values, but its defiantly not below average, I like the way that the camera is very free flowing, it adds to the whole aspect of the madness and excitement that Gwen is feeling inside. The rehab is great and 28 Days even made its own trashy soap what other movies do that? Definatly not Titanic, but defiantly not Blair Witch Project either.

Overall
An Astonishingly emotionally involving movie that’ll keep you laughing and crying till the end, great performances, and excellent script. And Oh Yes the greatest tagline to a movie evr! She was the life and soul of the party
Until she got a life!