TAMARA DREWE
Directed by Stephen Frears
Produced by Alison Owne, Paul Trijbits & Tracey Seaward
Released by Sony Pictures Classics
UK. 107 min. Rated R
With Gemma Arterton, Roger Allam, Bill Camp, Dominic Cooper, Luke Evans & Tamsin Greig

Loosely based on a graphic novel that’s, in turn, loosely based on Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, Tamara Drewe is a hopelessly middlebrow, overly long Britcom that’s too trite for smart people but too filled with literary in-jokes for most audiences.

Essentially a TV comedy bloated to feature length, Drewe suffers from the smart-alecky pretensions of its characters. The picture, helmed by Stephen Frears in his why-the-hell-not phase, centers on a writer’s retreat in rural England, home to a cast of merry eccentrics. There’s the oily best-selling writer (Roger Allam), who owns the retreat and serially philanders on the sort of wife a synopsis would describe as “long suffering” (Tamsin Greig). There’s Glen McCreavy (Bill Camp), a nebbishy, American academic finishing a Hardy biography during his sabbatical. And to round it out, there are two bored teenage girls whose dreary hijinks will kick the tale along.

Into this mix arrives Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton), a journalist who returns to her parent’s home to write a novel. Once an ugly duckling (shown in flashbacks with a tuberous, prosthetic nose), she comes back purely as Arterton. It makes sense she shakes everyone up. With her adorable pixie nose and her tight jean shorts, she’s a hearty embodiment of what the Village Voice calls the “age of accessible hotness.”

The literary spoofing is alright, but for every good joke—there’s a clever riff on Glen’s earlier, unsuccessful book on 19^th Romantics, “From Hearth to Heath”—there’s a thunderously bad one, like Glen’s pained, intellectual inner monologue that ends with, “I need a dump.” Alas, the film lives or dies on its jokes as the plot muddles through Drewe’s thoroughly uninteresting love affairs. Will she end up with the studly, noble, and frequently shirtless handyman Andy Cobb (Luke Evans); Dominic Cooper’s self-important, eye-lined rock star; or the cheating novelist? Guess! Unconscionably, the films clocks in at almost two hours. It’s like making a meal on an enormous piece of candy—the first few bites are sweet if forgettable, but after awhile, one sickens and becomes bored.

It doesn’t help that visually the film is slapdash, with nearly every shot of the English countryside tarted up with computer-drawn flowers and other effects. Worse, the tone is all over the place, sometimes going out of its way to offend the sort of middle-aged, Times Literary Supplement-reading viewer the picture is designed for. There is, for instance, the cruel death of a dog the filmmakers expect you to cheer. In the end, it’s hard to beat the Spectator’s seven-word headline: “Tamara Drewe is just tiresome and silly.” Put that on the back of yer DVD, Sony Pictures. Brendon Nafziger
October 10, 2010