It sounds like a fun romp, and it should be a fun romp, but it isn't. Instead, it's tiring and plain silly, without a single plausible character.

| Aug 30, 2018

A judicious comic actor, Arterton plays the eponymous Tamara, who throws a small English village into a tizzy when she returns from London to put the family cottage on the market.

| Jul 12, 2013

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 22, 2013

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 22, 2013

Frears' broader aim is to fully chart the daisy chain of consequences set in train by bad moral behaviour, a theme that has proved a favourite of his and which he prosecutes here with very satisfying results.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 2, 2011

There's something about the desperation of Jody that gives the film its most uncomfortable and surprising moments. Otherwise, it's a bit of a stroll down familiar paths.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 2, 2011

Good-natured as it is, it isn't nearly witty enough to justify the efforts of Frears's gifted cast.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 1, 2011

"Tamara Drewe" is a wickedly smart hybrid of a literary roundelay and a postfeminist manifesto.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 17, 2010

There's a whiff of desperation behind the comic romp Tamara Drewe that gives it some unexpected sting.

| Original Score: B | Nov 12, 2010

This screen adaptation by director Stephen Frears successfully re-creates the strip's pastoral tone and cheeky humor.

| Nov 12, 2010

Tamara Drewe's revolving affairs may be the film's raison d'être, but it plays like kids' stuff compared to their adult romancing -- frumpy and halting and more true to life than the rest of the film's forced fancifulness.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 12, 2010

The film lacks Frears' usual master touch; it often feels flat and self-conscious, in a way that the book never does.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 4, 2010

While no one would celebrate Tamara Drewe as a great movie, it is a reliable dispenser of visual and erotic pleasures.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 4, 2010

You know where you're going in territory that's actually more Jane Austen than Hardy, but Frears makes the most of the many bumps and twists.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 29, 2010

Caught midway between literary genres, the film lacks the literary sheen of Hardy and the darker comic impulses of Simmonds.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 28, 2010

Erotic comedies are often attempted but rarely realized. Tamara Drewe is proof that sexy and funny need not be mutually exclusive.

| Original Score: B+ | Oct 22, 2010

Tamara Drewe is one in a million.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 22, 2010

A bucolic romp set in a strikingly picturesque spot in England's Dorset County, it has its moments of charm. But the clever comedy it promises never really materializes.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 21, 2010

It upends expectations with a beguilingly episodic nature and splashes of modernity.

| Original Score: B | Oct 21, 2010

Here and there, tentatively, Frears and his design team approximate the pictorial flourishes of the graphic novel. But the ensemble appears to be guessing, much of the time, at a proper performance pitch.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 21, 2010