Tamara Drewe takes place in a fictional middle-of-nowhere village called Ewedown, England. There, a best-selling author and his wife have developed a quiet famland retreat for writers to come and work in peace. Things are calm at the retreat — though there’s plenty of egotism and eccentricity going around — until Tamara Drewe (now with a gorgeous post-rhinoplasty face) arrives and every man falls at her feet.
The premise is good for some British romantic comedy. The film is beautifully shot and well-cast. The movie claims to star Gemma Arterton in a role far more interesting than seen in her recent Hollywood fare (looking at you, Clash of the Titans). Indeed, the earliest parts of the movie live up to this promise quite well. Tamara herself seemed to me like a 21st-century Helen of Troy: A woman of great beauty who’s nothing more than a universal love interest, but is mindful and resentful of that fact. The way Arterton played the character and how she interacted with the other characters were very appealing to me.
Unfortunately, I learned very quickly that Tamara is not the woman who drives the plot. That honor was unjustly handed to a much inferior character.
Jody Long is a teenaged girl who’s angry with her divorced parents and her home in the middle of nowhere. She’s got an adolescent fangirl crush on Ben Sergeant, the drummer of her favorite rock band, who just happens to be staying with Tamara. From that point on, Jody engages in breaking and entering, theft, fraud and a number of other criminal activities against every other character in the movie. She knowingly works to ruin lives so Ben will stay in town and fall madly in love at first sight with this fifteen-year-old girl.
The problem is that this annoying, delusional, delinquent little bitch gets more screen time and development than most of the other characters. The object of her affection isn’t much better, since Ben is the very picture of a loud, drunken, womanizing, egotistical, grungy rock star. Together with Nicholas Hardiment — the philandering and self-absorbed pig who co-owns the writer’s retreat — these three characters drive the entire plot. At least 95 percent of everything noteworthy that happens in this movie can be traced directly back to these completely unlikeable characters. Thus, our supposed protagonists — Tamara, her love interest Andy Cobb and Nicholas’ wife Beth Hardiment — have relatively little effect on the plot and this greatly hurts the movie.
Additionally, the film suffers from a crippling lack of humor. Its premise — misunderstandings, infidelities and jealousies among buffoons and egotists — has been used as a basis for comedy since ancient times, but all this movie can manage is the occasional chuckle. Shakespeare wrote several comedic plays centered around the concept, yet all of the rumors and adultery in this film are played completely straight. This made the lion’s share of this movie completely boring and unmemorable.
Still, I want to stress that this film wasn’t completely bad. All of the actors here are doing a great job with what they’re given, most of the dialogue is good and the characters — aside from Jody, Ben and Nicholas — are all charming in their own ways. This makes it all the more frustrating that the film doesn’t give them enough to do and instead decides to focus on the more unpleasant characters instead.
Tamara Drewe is a disappointment. The cast, the premise and the visuals all showed great potential to make for a funny and charming rom-com, but the story was mismanaged and the humor was barely existent. I’m still waiting to see if Arterton will ever find her breakout movie, because solid as her performance was, this film isn’t it.