Tamara Drewe DVD Review




Title: Tamara Drewe
Director: Stephen Frears
Starring: Gemma Arterton, Dominic Cooper, Luke Evans, Roger Allam, Tamsin Greig
Cert: 15
Duration: 114 mins

Tamara Drewe DVDYOU CAN’T ENJOY THE COUNTRYSIDE WITHOUT GETTING A LITTLE DIRTY!

Tamara Drewe is based on a graphic novel. But don’t worry it’s not the sort of bloody violence and death type of graphic novel. Tamara Drewe is adapted from a graphic novel by Posy Simmonds who apparently had a regular column in a broadsheet newspaper featuring Ms Drewe.

The action is set in a Dorset village and mostly focuses on the inhabitants of a writer’s retreat run by dowdy Beth (Tamsin Greig) and her philandering crime novelist husband Nicholas, (Roger Allam).

Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton) is the geeky teenager-turned-sex-bob-omb who used to live in the village but moved away to the big smoke to become a music journalist. She is back home to sell her dead mother’s house. She doesn’t seem too worried about her mother being dead. But she does like shagging rock-stars that she interviews such as Ben (Dominic Cooper) and ex-boyfriends such as Andy (Luke Evans) who now works as a part-time gardener, part-time handyman and full time hunk, or blokes she has crushes on when she was a kid such as Nicholas.

Sounds fun doesn’t it? Well it’s not, it’s bloody mindnumbingly boring and no one is more upset about this than me. I’ve been enjoying the performances and curves of Ms Gemma Arterton since her early roles in Three And Out and I’m disappointed to see her in this limply-written, by-the-numbers-directed junk. Which is a surprise as Stephen Frears is normally excellent.

One of the biggest annoyances must be the inclusion of teen troublemakers Jody (Jessica Barden) and Casey (Charlotte Christie) who are always causing trouble fro Tamara and fantasising about being with Ben – the drummer from boy band Swipe. They are irksome in the extreme. Not bad young actors though. Greig and Allam put in good performances and have a little more to work with than most of the actors as far as their characters are concerned. Evans and Cooper don’t really do much but look hunky and dumb.

I could have done without watching almost two hours of this rubbish. Obviously with across-the-board top reviews I was expecting too much.

“ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR” – DAILY MAIL
“BRITISH HUMOUR AT IT’S VERY BEST” – RED
“FANTASTIC FUN” – THE OBSERVER
“BEWITCHINGLY FUNNY” – NEWS OF THE WORLD


I’m not sure what the other reviewers were watching. Perhaps I was watching something different by mistake? I wish I had.

But hey maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I watched it in the wrong frame of mind. Perhaps Tamara Drewe really is a satirical, sharp, witty drama/ rom-com.

Author : Kevin Stanley