Web Video / Tamara's Never Seen

Just do it!

"My name is Tamara Chambers and this is Tamara's Never Seen!"

In 2016, Tamara Chambers, known for her acting on The Nostalgia Critic, decided to create her own video series, inspired by her coworkers' and friends' shock at how few popular films she had seen.

Tamara's Never Seen is about Tamara watching movies that she'd never seen — typically either very famous films, such as Jaws, or very nostalgic films for her generation, such as Watership Down — and then describing her opinions and the feelings she had watching the film. Her cats Ike and Wendy appear as well. Eventually, she started taking predictions on her Twitter, where she encourages people to guess her opinions on the movie, and she confirms or denies a select few at the end of her review.

She later created a second series for Channel Awesome, Tamara Just Saw, where she reviews movies that are currently in theaters, often accompanied by her friend Codex^note then credited as Cody Melcher. She also made a joke series called Tamara's Seen where she claims to be talking about one film she's seen but instead describes the plot of another.

As of 2020, Tamara's Never Seen has moved from YouTube to the Channel Awesome Twitch channel, where Tamara livestreams films she's never seen before.

For the sake of brevity on the Nostalgia Critic page, this page may also cover topics from Tamara's other, non-'Nostalgia Critic videos.

Tropes for these series include:

• Accentuate the Negative:
  • At the end of her Jurassic Park review, Tamara hopes to avert this; love every film she sees and be relentlessly optimistic. Even when she's not really into The Dark Crystal, she still respects most of the puppet work. And though the tree rape scene in The Evil Dead (1981) makes her stab the wall, she manages that it was entertaining, just with a ton of issues. In the Just Saw of The Boss Baby, she's glad for Codex calling stuff out because she feels she always has to put on a smiley face.
  • Averted with "NOvember", as she knows suffering through bad films is even more fun cos she's so positive, so did a whole month dedicated to awful movies.
• Affirmative-Action Legacy: In her Back to the Future Part III review, she relays that Michael J Fox would like a girl to play his role in a reboot, and thinks it's great that he said that.
• Angry Fist-Shake: Tamara does a mini one in Ferris Bueller's Day Off because she's actually sick and Ferris is faking it.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: In her video on Back to the Future Part II, Tamara "throws out" that Michael J. Fox is a really cute woman.
• Author Appeal: She's always loved and encouraged Doug's crossdressing as well as Malcolm's, and when a guy likes men crossdressing as women in Paddington 2 she's like "yeah same".
• Bad "Bad Acting": Tamara makes fun of it in The Evil Dead (1981), imitating how every woman in the movie who is meant to be scared just grips their hair and yells.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Unintentionally in Tamara's Never Seen of The Dark Crystal, as she starts saying she's going to watch Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull before admitting she always gets the titles mixed up.
  • The joke of Tamara Has Seen, where the title is one movie she's watched (like The Phantom Menace) but she describes the plot of another movie (like Beauty and the Beast).
  • In the beginning of Big Trouble in Little China, Tamara asks Doug if he wants to watch it with her, and he starts off with "HOW DARE YOU NOT WATCH" before admitting he hasn't either.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In Jurassic Park, Tamara is in love with Jeff Goldblum and wants more movies with him in it. Cue a load of comments telling her to watch The Fly (1986). When she actually watches that she calls them out.
• Big "NO!": In The Fly (1986), when a car outside her house goes by for the third time, Tamara shouts it complete with Darth Vader picture.
• Bondage Is Bad: In her It review, Tamara brings up that consensual kink can go wrong, it doesn't always have to be "spanking = evil".
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: In her review of Jurassic Park, Tamara loves Hammond because he's passionate, adorable, sweet and "shows you how much an old white man can get away with". Complete with Twitchy Eye at the last one.
• But Wait, There's More!: Tamara already wasn't very happy about the sexism in The Evil Dead (1981), but she gets pretty screechy (if justifiably so) while getting to the tree rape. She then unleashes some rage.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Subverted. Kind of. She wore a tank top during her review of The Fly (1986) and was genuinely upset by the endless comments about her cleavage. She then pondered whether she should wear turtle necks for her videos and then defiantly declared she could wear whatever the hell she wanted.
• The Cameo:
  • Doug's voice makes a cameo in Tamara's review of The Fly (1986), for some reason taking a shower in her house.
  • Hyper Fangirl has a cameo in the Never Seen of Dredd, where she snaps at Tamara for joking that Devil Boner's gun skills aren't as impressive as those in the movie, and appears throughout the review doing weird stuff in slow motion.
• Cat Boy: In Legend (1985), Tamara wears the black unicorn horn and gets Doug to wear the kitty unicorn ears cos they suit him.
• Catchphrase: "Hi I'm Tamara Chambers and this is Tamara's Never Seen!".
• Cluster F-Bomb: Like Doug's mom, Tamara's dad watches her series and wishes she didn't say the f word so much. Of course after saying this in The Dark Crystal, she shouts that Jen is so fucking awkward. Unlike Doug though, Tamara usually bleeps the swears from her videos.
• Cosplay:
  • A common thing for her (and guests) to do is dress up like one of the characters from the movie and do the review in costume. She and Doug tease in The Human Centipede that there's no way to do that without getting flagged or being someone's fetish.
  • Both Doug and Malcolm have done pretty good jobs of pretending to be her, Doug in her clothes and lampshading her way of talking (high pitched start then lower voiced), and Malcolm doing an April Fools' Day Malcolm’s Never Seen (he’s genuinely never seen Mary Poppins though) pretending to be her and getting her inflections.
• Creepy Cockroach: Tamara reveals in the Creepshow vlog that she has a shuddering terror of beetles and bugs and can't even watch Beetlejuice.
• Crossover:
  • Doug Walker joined her for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Legend (1985), Big Trouble in Little China, Highlander, Reservoir Dogs and The Human Centipede.
  • Brad Jones joined her for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie.
• Cute Kitten: Tamara's cats make plenty of appearances in her Never Seen series, to the point where she apologizes if Ike can't be around. In her review of The Blair Witch Project, Wendy starts screaming for attention and Tamara picks her up while Malcolm strokes her.
• Damned by Faint Praise:
  • In The Fly (1986), how Tamara feels about a comment telling others to stop fake geek girl-ing her/saying they wanting to fuck her... and instead focus on the cats.
  • In Tamara's make-up tutorial, she speaks for a lot of girls when she tells guys "you don't need to wear make-up!" is not a compliment, just annoying.
  • She gives Evil Dead 2 a mini clap for not going the tree rape route again.
• Darker and Edgier: In her review of The Secret of NIMH, Tamara talks about how she grew up on Disney and loved it, but her favorite is The Hunchback of Notre Dame because it took risks, and respects Bluth films for the same reasons.
• Diamonds in the Buff: Averted in her Titanic review. She notes how she can't do the full-on Rose cosplay of wearing the Heart of the Ocean and nothing else because YouTube frowns on that. Instead, she wears a dress similar to one Kate Winslet wears in the film.
• Double Standard:
  • In reference to all the Ghostbusters (2016) liking-it-related-abuse her co-workers were getting, Tamara shades in The Secret of NIMH that because it has a cool female lead, there must be some hate for the movie out there.
  • As future Tamara points out in Back to the Future II, if boys can go shirtless in their videos, her past self is allowed to wear tank tops.
  • In Tamara's review of The Evil Dead (1981), she brings up that none of the men who go into the woods are threatened with assault, let alone get raped by a tree.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma: In The Fifth Element, Tamara has a mini rant about it, saying kissing women when they're sleeping and so can't consent is only okay when it saves people like in Sleeping Beauty.
• Dull Surprise:
  • The main reason why Tamara wasn't fond of The Neverending Story, as the acting is so wooden.
  • She has Emma Watson as a Celeb Crush, but admits she likes her more as a person and her acting isn't amazing.
• Easily Forgiven: In The Fifth Element, Tamara is mad at Korben Dallas for forcing a kiss on Leeloo, but forgives him when he's nice to his cat.
• Eating the Eye Candy: In her review of Jurassic Park, Tamara joins the mass crowd of women who have the hots for Jeff Goldblum.
  • In keeping with her preferences, she also casts her eye on Geena Davis.
• Elephant in the Living Room: Referenced by Tamara in her review of Back to the Future Part II, as when she takes the turtleneck off, she addresses viewers with "you didn't think I'd address it did you" before Flipping the Bird.
• Episode Title Card: From Back To The Future II, Tamara's show also gets actual title cards that are made by Walter. These were eventually replaced by a video sequence, however.
• "Eureka!" Moment: In her review of Return to Oz, Tamara can't imagine watching the film as a kid, and wonders if that's what has made Doug and Rob so messed up.
• Everyone Has Standards: When Tamara at cons says she loves all movies, Doug reminds her that she really can't stand The Princess Diaries II. She also hated Ghost in the Shell (2017) so much that she was going to email Channel Awesome and fake being sick that week.
• Evolving Credits: Has gone through a few, starting with a child's voice squeaking "Tamara's Never Seen", then followed by Doug and company yelling "you haven't seen that?!" with her shrugging, and then a Clarissa Explains It All parody.
• Fair for Its Day: In-universe during her review of Return to Oz, Tamara admits that electroshock therapy for mentally ill people was pretty progressive for the time.
• First-World Problems: After getting a ton of "you're a fake geek girl/must have been neglected" for just not watching popular movies, Tamara sarcasm moded that her childhood must have sucked before waving to her parents who watch the show.
  • She calls them out again in her crossover with Andre, with her being excited about ruining some childhoods and him telling them in advance she had a life outside watching movies.
  • In Evil Dead 2, Tamara has a brief moment of admitting movies are harder to get through now that it's a "job", then eye-rolls and name-drops this trope at herself.
• Flipping the Bird: In her review of Back to the Future Part II, Tamara flips a double handed bird at all the guys being gross about her body.
• Flipping the Table: In her review of The Secret Of NIMH, Tamara loves Timmy and swears to flip everything if he dies.
• Forceful Kiss: Tamara doesn't like this trope at all, complaining about it in The Fifth Element (and by extension Ghostbusters (1984)) and Back to the Future.
• Forgot About His Powers: The Evil Dead (1981) subverting this annoys Tamara, as she PSAs that there's no time to bury your friends, chop them up and get moving.
• Funny Background Event: In her review of The Fifth Element, Tamara's cat Wendy gets her head stuck in the blinds for a second and then paws off.
• Genki Girl: Her default setting is cheery perkiness and it takes a really bad movie to bring her down, she also brings out the keet in Doug and Malcolm (who are both pretty excitable anyway) whenever they appear.
• Gilligan Cut: She's fond of this, talking about [whatever movie] in the opening and assuming what she'll think, and then cutting to being frozen with joy or disgust.
• Give Geeks a Chance: In The Fly (1986), Tamara sarcastically says that the 80s geek with the cute journalist is "such a realistic dynamic".
• Gorn: Tamara says in The Fly (1986) that she's not interested in 'horror' movies like Saw (she loves horror, just not the ones that bank on gore), and finds the former film hard to deal with.
• Gratuitous Rape: Tamara can't stand the trope, genuinely being angry at The Evil Dead (1981) having a tree rape scene because it's sexist and awful and doesn't further the plot at all.
• Hair Flip: Tamara's Running Gag in "Tamara's Never Seen". In The Terminator, her brother does a "luscious" (in her words) hair flip, proving the talent runs in the family.
  • Other guest stars find ways to emulate her flipping too, such as Doug trying a "beard flip" in Tamara's review of Big Trouble in Little China.
• Halloween Episode: Starting September 2016, Tamara had "Tam-tober Fest", reviewing the Evil Dead trilogy.
• Hell Is That Noise: In her review of Return to Oz, the patients moaning and screaming is this to Tamara.
• I Need a Freaking Drink:
  • Neither Jim or Tamara are particularly keen on watching Home Alone, and they knock their drinking flasks together in preparation.
  • After watching The Star Wars Holiday Special, she takes a shot glass featuring a character who hasn't been "tainted" and chugs.
• Inherently Funny Words: Tamara thinks the name "Cheryl" is the funniest ever, and wants to name a rat that.
• Insistent Terminology: While not meaning it in a bad way (as she loves reviewers, just doesn't feel like she's good at it), Tamara says that her thing is reaction videos, not reviews.
• "Just Joking" Justification: In her review of Blazing Saddles, Tamara explains to people who still don't get it (and there was plenty of racism in the comments) that the film can get away with racism cos it's clearly satire, but shouting on YT and claiming jokes really isn't.
  • Like Blazing Saddles, Tamara talks about all the homophobic language in Heathers making her uncomfortable, but mostly being okay because they were making fun of homophobes.
• Late to the Punchline: In her review of Jurassic Park (as she never saw it before), Tamara finally gets where the "Alan" joke in the Jurassic Park 3 review comes from.
• Laughing Mad: Her reaction to Garbage Pail Kids is laughter and "quick question, what the fuck was that".
• Lighter and Softer: To The Nostalgia Critic. This is mostly just Tamara sitting on her couch squeeing about movies she hasn't watched while playing with her cats, while Doug has talked a lot about how he uses Critic as therapy.
• Little "No": Tamara's reaction to The Fifth Element having Dude, She's Like in a Coma is a chorus of no's and threatening Bruce Willis's character with the water spritzer she uses for her cat.
• Male Frontal Nudity: In The Terminator, Tamara is glad to see some shadow penis as it's always lady parts.
• Male Gaze: While she likes Justice League (2017), she's disappointed that it went from Wonder Woman (2017) with sensible armor to this film with asscheeks.
• Money, Dear Boy: Mocked after an angry boy ranted at her for Home Alone, calling herself Tamara "money and views" Chambers when she wants to do Doctor Who vlogs with her brother.
• Monochrome Casting: Both Tamara and Malcolm love that Spider-Man: Homecoming averts it, and Peter actually looks like he's in Queens.
• Mood Whiplash: Played for Laughs in Tamara's BTTF 3 video, as she mourns the first take of the episode (she didn't have the mike on) and then goes right back to Genki Girl mode.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: In her Wonder Woman (2017) review, Tamara makes it very clear that she's not body shaming, but is a little disappointed at Gal Gadot's skinny arms.
• My Eyes Are Up Here:
  • Tamara doesn't even do anything fanservicey in her series, but because she sometimes shows a bit of cleavage, dudes will go on about her breasts instead of what she's saying. She gets annoyed by this.
  • She did Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie with Brad and thought it was safe to sit cross-legged with some foot showing. The foot fetishists proved her wrong, annoying her even more by saying she did it “intentionally”.
• Non-Indicative Name: In Creepshow, Tamara says she can't watch Beetlejuice because she assumes it has a ton of beetles.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: In her review of The Dark Crystal, Tamara calls Jim Henson to puppets like Obama to black presidents, he's the only one.
• Police Brutality: Referenced in Blazing Saddles, where Tamara comes right out and says black lives matter.
• Polyamory: In Heathers, Tamara mentions that you can date multiple people, but you got to talk it out first and make sure everyone's cool with it.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: The idea behind the main series is how Tamara hasn't seen most popular movies. In the Anime Iowa panel, she and Doug have a giggle about all the comments claiming she's lying about having not seen [whatever movie] and Doug confirms that she really hasn't watched anything. And in The Blair Witch Project, Malcolm said he hadn't seen that many movies either, making her Squee.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: For her videos' background music, she uses a free track called "Mighty Like Us".
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: She often calls out rapeyness in mainstream movies, and has a genuine rage at Tree Rape in The Evil Dead (1981).
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: She rants at The Evil Dead (1981) for having tree rape.

  Tamara: What the hell, movie? It doesn't further the plot at all, not even a little bit, everyone else gets possessed and none of them had to get raped by a tree. I don't enjoy it at all, and no guy get raped by trees and that's terrible, I don't want that for anyone but it just needs to be equal I think, and it just makes me so angry. [stabs the wall]

• Running Gag: Starting from The Goonies, hair flipping with explosion noises. Sometimes for sass and sometimes just for fun, to the point she apologizes if she forgets to include them in a video.
  • Cody finishing the title of "Tamara Just Saw" with "And Cody Just Saw Too, As Well" and adding something else at the end.
• Sarcasm Mode: Her make-up tutorial is gleeful sarcasm about how it's so much fun to put a ton of shit on your face to look acceptable for men on the internet.
• Screw Yourself: Present Tamara's reaction to future Tamara (who is wearing the usual of a tank top and flannel) is a "damn I look good".
• Self-Deprecation: She has a big dose of it, making fun of her Hair Flip Running Gag, relentless optimism and love of her cats.
• Separated by a Common Language: While she's in Scotland, Tamara pronounces Edinburgh (like an ugh sound) like Edinborough.
• Sequelitis: Like many people, Tamara loved the first The Land Before Time (and has actually seen it), but it just kept going forever and she's seen more than she cares to.
• Sexy Priest: In her review, Tamara side-notes that she's weirdly attracted to the priest in The Exorcist.
• Ship Tease: In Tamara's review of The Fly (1986), Doug apparently makes a habit of showering in her or Malcolm's house.
• Sick Episode: Ferris Bueller's Day Off, with a very sick Tamara choosing it because it's about a kid pretending to be sick to get out of school.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: In Army of Darkness, Tamara gets irritated with Ash treating his girlfriend badly, followed by her slapping him and him kissing her.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: One of the things Tamara loves about The Goonies is how goofy-optimistic it is, like some boys were totally going to save their house by finding treasure with their bikes.
• Slut-Shaming: In her review of Robocop 1987, Tamara brings up someone whining that she wears too many tank tops and should put more clothes on. Obviously she refuses this demand.
• So Bad, It's Good:
  • Tamara's in-universe view of The Evil Dead (1981). She likes the second one a lot more.
  • Her, Malcolm and Doug are all little kid-excited about how passionately bad The Greatest Showman is, while Rob is the token adult.
• Special Guest: Has a few, like Doug being in her shower during The Fly (1986), Malcolm reviewing The Blair Witch Project with her and she did The Terminator with her brother.
• Squick: In-universe, especially towards the end, Tamara gets plenty upset at the grossness of The Fly (1986).
• Stunned Silence: Her initial reaction to Saving Private Ryan. She even notes her first pages of notes, reacting to the War Is Hell opening, contain mostly variants on "Oh my God".
• Subverted Kids' Show: Her short video "Cody and Tamara play with each other", in which they read The Babadook like they're kid show hosts.
• Take That, Audience!: In Tamara's Secret Of NIMH review, she wonders if having a strong brave character means the movie is getting any hate (shading about Ghostbusters) and then cheerfully snarks "I sure will after that!" She also isn't shy about mocking the people who only watch her because she's hot, such as the skit about her future self telling her she can wear a tank top regardless of what picky slut-shamers say about her.
• Take That, Critics!: Tamara did a video responding to hate comments, noting that she only picked the easier ones (so none of the rape/death threats) she could actually talk about without getting angry. She'll also occassionally post screenshots of ridiculous/creeper/sexist comments on twitter so she and everyone else can have a laugh at them.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Hellraiser is the only TNS where she's dreading snapping her fingers for the credits.
• Tempting Fate:
  • In her review of Return to Oz, Tamara cheerfully says she'll watch it because it'll be fun. Cut to her holding her popcorn and coke in terror.
  • In The Fly (1986), Tamara can't wait to see Goldblum again and is sure it won't be the kind of torture porn-gory that she has no interest in. Cue watching and asking everyone why they told her to see it.
• Thing-O-Meter: In Back to the Future Part II, Tamara has a counter for how many times she says "love". It breaks in the next episode. She also has a "hilarious" count for Young Frankenstein.
• Trauma Button: Tamara in The Exorcist outright says that seeing tests after tests after tests, especially on a child, is triggering for her.
  Tamara: I hate that word. [laughs] No I don't.
• Visual Pun: In The Dark Crystal, when they're deciding by rock who should rule next, Tamara pulls up an image of The Rock.
• The Voice: In Tamara's review of The Fly (1986), Doug is in her shower, but we don't see him, only hear his voiceover.
• White Male Lead: Tamara talks about how The Great Wall is filled with Asian people, and has an Asian director… and there's Matt Damon being Matt Damon.

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