In a World….

Posted on August 15, 2013 at 3:19 pm

Writer/director/star Lake Bell has produced a smart, fresh, and funny film that sends up Hollywood, sexism, and the conventions of the romantic comedy and yet somehow has us rooting for the characters to find a happy ending. And she has given juicy roles to a great collection of performers who are too often overlooked — starting with herself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpFNTvA93iY

Bell plays Carol, a voice coach and would-be voiceover announcer, the daughter of Sam (Fred Melamed), a very successful voiceover artist well known for his work narrating movie trailers. The death of Don LaFontaine, the acknowledged leader of this small and very competitive field, has left a perceived opening. According to this film, LaFontaine’s signature opening, “In a world….” is about to be revived for a new “Hunger Games”-like “quadrilogy,” and the job of narrating the trailers is considered the ultimate achievement. Sam has just told Carol she cannot live with him any more because his young girlfriend is moving in. So, Carol has gone to sleep on the couch in the small apartment her sister Dani (Micheala Watkins) shares with her work-at-home husband, Moe (Rob Corddry).

Sam is advising up-and-coming voice artist Gustav (Ken Marino), positioning him to take over the big “In a world…” job. But a temp track recorded by Carol has captured the attention of the studio, and she finds herself in the running for an unprecedented opportunity to be a female voice on a movie trailer. This makes sense as the quadrilogy is about mutant Amazons, but the established tradition is for a deep, rumbling, male “voice of God” narrator.

Bell makes first-timer mistakes in trying to pack too many ideas into the film, but she does a masterful job of keeping it all in balance. She serves the other actors as a director better than she does herself. Carol is sometimes just too much of a clueless, klutz. But when she shows a young professional woman that taking like a teenager with a question inflection at the end of every sentence how important it is to own your voice, it is clear to us that this movie shows how well she owns hers.

Parents should know that this film has very strong language including crude sexual references and some non-explicit sexual situations with some poor choices.

Family discussion: Why don’t trailers use women narrators? What do we learn from Carol’s conversation in the ladies’ room?

If you like this, try: the documentary about voiceover artists, “I Know That Voice”

Related Tags:

Comedy Family Issues

No Strings Attached

Posted on May 10, 2011 at 8:18 am

This is another one of those romantic comedies where a bland couple has some trivial obstacles to overcome and you just wish they would get out of the way because their surrounding friends and family are much more interesting.

Mindy Kaling (“The Office”), Greta Gerwig (“Greenberg”), Chris “Ludacris” Bridges (“Back for the First Time”), Kevin Kline (“A Fish Called Wanda”), Lake Bell (“It’s Complicated”), and Jake M. Johnson (“Paper Heart”) and the characters they play are each far more deserving of a movie of their own than the dull couple played by Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher.

This seems to be a movie moment for stories about what Erica Jong used to call zipless , the fantasy of an experience that is physical perfection with no thinking or emotion involved at all. “Friends With Benefits” has an almost identical plot to this one and “Hall Pass,” and “Just Go With It” are among the films that focus on the premise of sex without any sort of romantic entanglements or consequences. This made for a pretty good “Seinfeld” episode but I’m not sure there is enough in that premise for even one movie, and this movie does not persuade me otherwise.

First we have to have a reason for both parties to avoid any relationship beyond the physical. It’s pretty weak on her part and pretty ugly on his. Kutcher plays a guy who has been hurt. His ex-girlfriend is sleeping with his father (Kevin Kline) a one-time television star with a taste for drugs and women, the emotional maturity of a two-year-old and the vocabulary of a Penthouse letter. Portman plays a doctor who is just too busy for relationship niceties. Ultimately, we find out there’s a little bit more to it, but it’s too dull to care about. In the meantime, our couple finds out that there’s no such thing as uncomplicated sex.

Um, duh.

Portman does what she can for her character despite her idiotic and inconsiderate behavior. Kutcher plays his usual lovable St. Bernard puppy self, the boyfriend so perfect he even makes a special mix CD for soothing menstrual cramps. But the resolution is so clear from the beginning and the contrast with the more engaging characters around them so clear that it feels like it keeps trying to lose us. Instead of making us care about the couple, it tries to win us over with crassly provocative behavior and language. This movie would be more accurately titled, “a salute to the overshare.” Unless you think it deserves saluting, skip it.

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Comedy Romance