Roaring back into town, she visibly shakes up the town's inhabitants, including successful crime novelist Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam), on whom she once had a torrid and unrequited crush, his dutiful and oft-ignored wife Beth (Tamsin Greig), the Hardiment's handsome on-site fix-it man and onetime teen lover of Tamara, Andy Cobb (Luke Evans), plus a host of aspiring novelists who regularly come to the Hardiment farm for a writer's getaway. Soon, Tamara and her antics give them plenty of fuel for crafting their novels.
Tamara enlists Andy to help work on her homestead so she can sell it and get herself back to the flash and glitz of London, but she soon finds herself having feelings for him, once again. However, an interview with Ben Sergeant (Dominic Cooper), the wild and sexy drummer of the popular rock band Swipe, turns into immediate romance and both Tamara and Ben find reason to stick around the little village - with each other. Of course, this pleases the two local teen girls who are Swipe's biggest fans, Jody (Jessica Barden) and Casey (Charlotte Christie), to absolutely no end. They make it their business to follow Ben and Tamara's every move. When the country life gets a bit boring for Ben and he and Tams return to London, the two girls break into Tamara's home and her computer and send a scathing email filled with sexual invitations to Nicholas Hardiment, Ben Sergeant and Andy Cobb! Naturally, chaos ensues and Ben angrily breaks up with Tamara, Nicholas pursues an affair with her and Andy just doesn't know what to think. Jody is devastated since all she wanted to do was get Ben back to their small town and she and Casey meddle even more, causing a myriad of Tamara's activities to come to light and ultimately resulting in the destruction of a marriage and two untimely deaths.
For a comedy, I didn't find Tamara Drewe to be all that funny. There were some amusing scenes and I did learn several new curse words, but I typically expect more laughs in a comedy. Gemma Arterton is lovely as Tamara Drewe and does an excellent job in the role, but honestly, the character is just very selfish and wasn't very likeable. In fact, most of the characters weren't too likeable and I didn't find myself caring too much about what happened to them. Nicholas Hardiment was an arrogant ass who enjoyed cheating on his wife and Beth not only handled all of his business affairs skillfully and ran the ranch, but she allowed herself to be made a fool of over and over again. Andy Cobb was a nice enough fellow, but Ben Sergeant was a bit of a spoiled brat. Jody and Casey were simply awful and even the American writer staying at the Hardiment's ranch, Glen McCreavy (Bill Camp), ended up leaving a sour taste in my mouth by the movie's end. I originally really liked him because he seemed to care about Beth's feelings and their friendship evolved sweetly, but he turned out to be, well, a bit of a spineless wonder.
As far as special features, they are slim and basically include commentary, a short making-of featurette and a featurette on the translation of the graphic novel to the silver screen. They might be something fans of the graphic novel would enjoy, but they are otherwise forgettable.
The acting is quite good across the board, but I found the movie tended to drag a bit and overall, it was just boring. Plus, there was a disturbing scene where a dead goose was being plucked after having just had it's neck wrung and this disgusted me. If you are a big fan of the graphic novel or British comedy, you may want to check it out, but otherwise, I'd skip it.
