We’ve seen ‘Tamara Drewe’ before

Graphic novels would seem to be perfect for the movies. Yet there have been few really good ones. “The Dark Knight.” “V for Vendetta.” The original “X-Men.” “Sin City.” “Spider-Man.” And, of course, “300.”

You could put “Watchmen” on the list. But I don’t think the film lived up to the novel’s greatness.

“Tamara Drewe” is nothing like the above movies. Based on a series on comic strips that ran in the British newspaper The Guardian from 2005 to 2007, “Tamara Drewe” is like a number of minor British romantic comedies that star Hugh Grant.

Grant is nowhere to be seen, which is good because he’s getting a little old to play his trademark stuttering, stammering romantic self. Instead, we have writers congregating in a writers’ colony, capturing life on paper that is more juicy than what most are able to put on the page.

Into this world returns the title character, a writer in her own right — a tabloid “journalist.” As played by Gemma Arterton , the perfect girl next door if the girl next door was a Victoria’s Secret model, Tamara is a young woman looking for … something. Mostly it seems to be some sense of lost love following the recent death of her mother.

Though her name is the film’s title, Tamara is only one of the characters. Others include the boy she left behind, the rock star she manages to pick up, the best-selling writer of detective novels who lives in the adjacent writer’s colony, the writer’s long-suffering wife, the American academic who admires the wife’s stalwart tendencies … and so on.

I’d like to say that “Tamara Drewe” is a delightful romp — although, damn, I hope I don’t talk like that. But even if I did, I’d be a bit more reserved. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Somewhat. And Arterton certainly is eye candy. But it owes too much a debt to so many other, and better, British romantic comedies.

Should had somebody with a six-pack of abs yelling, “This is Sparta!” Couldn’t have hurt.

Below : The trailer for “Tamara Drewe.”