Best known for his sober dramas or elegant genre exercises, Stephen Frears’ latest finds the director taking a leap into his most thoroughly mainstream comedy yet and the results, as might be expected, are mixed. Based on a graphic novel that itself is inspired by the classic Thomas Hardy work “Far From The Madding Crowd,” “Tamara Drewe” is a typical, very British small town comedy with all the zaniness, eccentric characters and madcap hijinks the genre implies.
Set in the small town of Ewedown, the film, which features a sprawling ensemble cast of characters, focuses on a few different plot threads all of which inevitably come together at some point (and no, this isn’t a spoiler, but generally indicative of the genre; if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all). Leading the pack is the titular Tamara, a former ugly duckling who returns home a swan and is keen to sell the family farm; there’s Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam), a famous crime writer and his wife Beth (Tamsin Greig) who run a writer’s retreat for aspiring authors; there’s Andy (Luke Evans) the handyman and the all around embodiment of everything that is stereotypically masculine; Glen (Bill Camp) the American academic author who finds his writer’s block cured with the help of Beth and the retreat; and townies/best friends Jody and Casey who are bored with small-town life and constantly up to no good (mostly egging cars and smoking cigarettes with a disaffected sulk).
Things get underway when Tamara takes up with Ben (Dominic Cooper), an indie rock drummer (and yes, it’s definitely a movie when the likes of Gemma Arterton dates a scruffy, eyeliner-wearing drummer) sending Jody, a fifteen-year old with a mad crush on Ben, into a tizzy of jealously and anger. She goes to extraordinary lengths to end their relationship, and in the process also ends up meddling in everyone else’s affairs and causing problems for the likes of Nicholas who is cheating on his wife, and Andy who dated Tamara when they were teens and still holds a candle for her.
Explaining what happens next would spoil the movie, but it would also double the length of this review as the screenplay by Moira Buffini stuffs in enough plot-twists and re-twists to fill five half-hour sitcoms. This film, delivered with energetic aplomb by the cast, pretty much runs out of steam at about the halfway mark, setting up a predictable series of events that are not particularly original or compelling. That said, it speaks to Frears’ skill and the casts’ full embodiment of their characters that the film remains engaging. Despite the over-familiarity of the material, we do want to see what eventually will happen to everyone involved and how it will play out, even though the film has a tendency to unnaturally shift from sort-of believable romp to flat-out farce (particularly in the final reel).
As we said, the cast gives the material their all, but the best peformance is from one of the most unlikeliest places. Bill Camp utterly shines as Glen, and scores some of the film’s biggest laughs. Built and mannered like Paul Giamatti circa “American Splendor” (though not as bitter), Camp provides the film’s most sincere and generous belly laughs, as Glen resents Nicholas’ success, and struggles to finish his own academic novel (on Thomas Hardy natch) while secretly pining for Beth. We wouldn’t be surprised if Camp starts getting more calls as he’s a pure delight here. Again, everyone else is first-rate and as for Arterton, she doesn’t have to do much more than act like the morally-uncompromised town bike (everyone gets a ride), fill out several outfits nicely and generally just show up and look great naked (Frears certainly finds more than one opportunity to display Arterton as God made her). Her role isn’t particularly complex and she handles it fine, and since this is an ensemble film as much about the other characters as hers, Arterton isn’t required to carry the film (which is a relief, because her arc is by far the least interesting, and isn’t even that central to the film, which makes the marketing around her all the more strange).
But by the end of this one, which runs a little on the long side, it comfortably settles into being just another slightly-above-average comedy of errors. Even composer Alexandre Desplat, curiously employed here, isn’t forced to do much more than ready a handful of bouncy, ‘comic’ pieces that are pretty much interchangeable with any standard, faceless music cues for a film like this one. It’s easily his most unremarkable, pedestrian score to date (which is especially a shame following his crackling work for Roman Polanski’s “Ghost Writer”). “Tamara Drewe” will certainly be an easy crowd-pleaser, and has the chance to be a modest box office success, but it’s the kind of film that will live eternally on cable. Its structure, timing and humor is old-hat and rote, so that you can fall in and out of the film at any moment and know exactly what’s happening. It isn’t bad, it’s just there isn’t all that much to distinguish it from the countless other films that have come and gone that all do pretty much the same thing. The film doesn’t demand much, and in turn the filmmaking isn’t that demanding either. [C+]