Simply A Masterpiece

Crappy film

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Taken from a graphic novel that is loosely based on "Far from the Madding Crowd", "Tamara Drewe" is something of an unexpected treat from the great Stephen Frears. Gemma Arterton is Tamara, a journalist and former ugly duckling, who returns to the village of her youth, now something of a beauty, (she's had a nose job), causing considerable consternation among the locals, mostly the men, principal of whom is Roger Allam's crime writer who is two-timing his wife Tasmin Greig with any woman who moves. Then there's Tamara's old boyfriend Luke Evans, (think Gabriel Oak), and the rock drummer, (an excellent Dominic Cooper), she falls for (he's the Sergeant Troy figure). To make sure we get the Hardy analogy there's an American writer staying with Allam and in love with Greig and currently writing a book on the novelist. The plot, which also involves a couple of teenage girls with a crush on the Cooper character, gets more and more convoluted as the film progresses with the humour turning increasingly sour, but it's funny and clever and its failure was totally undeserved. Not the best of Frears but worth seeing.

Cartoonist Posy Simmons has been chronicling the secret fears and loathings of the middle classes for over 30 years. But what makes her cartoons funny is the way a single picture, an exaggerated drawing of an eye or an uncomfortable smirk, can speak a thousand words. Make a film of a cartoon - and make fully explicit the implied contents of Posy's seductive images - and the danger is that what you get is too shallow to work as a serious film, without the delights of Posy's drawings (like a moving version of a dreadful photo-comic). So it is with Stephen Frears' version of 'Tamara Drewe', which occurs in a picture-perfect version of the English countryside, has a soundtrack that explicitly declares the film to be a caper, and a cast of characters, many beautiful, all one-dimensional, and none of whom you care for. Roger Allam, playing a role not wholly dissimilar role to his part in 'The Thick of It', is good fun, but it feels overall more like a sketched outline than something fully worked out: more storyboard than cartoon.

If you liked the Tamara Drewe serialisation in the Guardian or bought the graphic novel or are just a fan of Posy Simmonds, prepare to be disappointed.In the first place, the film is the original work forced into the straitjacket of "comedy". This means the original ending has been totally re-written, since teenage girls dying of solvent abuse isn't something that could be played for laughs, not to mention the possibility of messing up the certification. It also means some characters are made into clownish caricatures, principally supposed indie drummer Ben Sergeant whom Dominic Cooper plays as some ridiculous greaseball rock-n-roller so that we might believe the writers' last experience of popular music was going to see David Essex in That'll Be The Day in 1973. Barden and Christie also overplay the teenage awkwardness of Jody and Casey to the extent that Charlotte Christie at times seems to lumber about like Frankenstein's Igor, which leads to the second problem: mis-casting.Gemma Arterton is pretty. Luke Evans is good, Bill Camp is good, the others are all wrong. See above for Dominic Cooper. Tamsin Greig is too hot to be frumpy fifty-something Beth but Roger Allam not hot enough to be her philandering husband: he has a face that says "Harrumph" and its hard to believe a queue of younger women are waiting to bed him. Bronagh Gallagher is added as another clown whose Ian Paisley voice doesn't work among the up themselves novelists.The film is a bimbo. It's not so bad if you want a few giggles with darling scenery, screwball characters and a pretty actress who looks nice with not much on, but if you actually want an adaptation, stay away.

"Tamara Drew" is the typical irreverent British comedy, where comedy is not for its own sake, on the contrary the witty humour leaves space to some reflection upon human relationships, and love is responsible of all the twists and damages within the story. But what is interesting is not the story itself, which is quite lacking any significance, being the plot in the service of the characters, as they are more complex than they may seem. At the beginning they appear as prototypes of human vices or virtues: the unfaithful husband, the good supporting and reconciling wife, the sex bomb who would make every man fall into her bed, the good-hearted intellectual who still has some moral values... and in a way they are. But as the story progresses it helps reveal their complexity, to come to the conclusion that life is more simple than people often pretend it to be. The movie offers amusing moments, but it gets in a way a black comedy , mainly in the end, revealing some crudity, as if some kind of justice has to be rendered. The cast is explosive, the actress playing Tamara is undoubtedly suitable for her role, all the people living in the village are authentic and credible, showing a good chemistry between them, and the two girls, mainly Jodie, are really sparkling. On the whole, an entertaining product, full of humour to be explored.