‘In a World…” features comedians with flawless chemistry
Lake Bell’s feature screenwriting and directing debut is a relaxed insider comedy with sharp wit, insight and a cast full of talented and funny actors. The title, “In a World…,” comes from the opening line heard in many movie trailers. Carol (Lake Bell, “Childrens Hospital”) is a vocal coach and struggling voiceover artist. She is at a point where getting a Sunny D commercial makes her ecstatic.
The voiceover industry is largely male-dominated and her ultimate goal is to be the voiceover on a trailer for a major motion picture. The single 30-something-year-old lives with her sister, Dani (Michaela Watkins, “Enlightened”), and Dani’s boyfriend, Moe (Rob Corddry, “Childrens Hospital). Even though Dani and Moe go through relationship issues in the film, they seem to be more mature and have a more stable life than the perky Carol. She and her sister have a troubled relationship with their father, Sam (Fred Melamed, “A Serious Man”), a legend in the voiceover field with a new memoir out. Carol has a fling with rival voiceover artist, hotshot Gustav (Ken Marino, “Childrens Hospital”) before he realizes she is up for a job he desperately wants. She finds a better match right under her nose at work with the adorable Louis (Demetri Martin).
Lake Bell’s film seems like a film made by a group of comic actors who bring out the best in each other. Many of them might not be known by name by audiences, but it is full of recognizable faces from the last decade of film and television comedy. There could quite easily be hours of equally worthy material not used in the final 93-minute film. The not-entirely-polished film might have been even better if it had been tightened with another script revision. The film does not thrust forward with plot revelations but simply wanders from scene to scene with frequently funny and sometimes laugh-out-loud moments and lines. It feels like a female-led Judd Apatow film without all the raunch and pot jokes. The humor always helps build characterization, and a joke is never made just for a laugh if it is not in character.
Lake Bell is so likable and quirky, but underneath her girlish charm, there is a woman not confronting her middle age and flailing “in a world,” the voiceover industry, where men get all the good jobs. She can put on an array of different voices, but she has not found her own. She has lived in the shadow of her famous father, wonderfully played by Melamed, who played a very similar character, the oft-mentioned Sy Ableman, in the Coen Brothers’ “A Serious Man.” She will put her sister’s job at risk in order to listen to and record her clients’ accents. When she is given the opportunity to do the voiceover on a movie trailer, she is forced to pull herself together and belt out “In a world….” With her first film, Lake Bell has proven to be one of the stronger voices, male or female, in the comedy world.