In a world of superhero antics, bombastic pyrotechnics and brooding self-serious dithering that is this summer movie season, one woman strives to make her mark in the cinematic sea of alpha male dominance. It will require strength. It will require drive. For in a world full of nay-saying chauvinism, there is nothing but peril. And yet, somehow, perhaps inexplicably,
In a World..., the disarming, deceptively simple and altogether winning new comedy written, directed and starring Lake Bell manages to find a wealth of wit and poise in her light feminist behind-the-scenes Hollywood satire revolving an untapped sect of the industry-- that of voice over artists. The very nature of voice acting requires a large degree of anonymity, but the voices are a thing of legend because of their ubiquity-- the guys (and girls) who voice the movie trailers and commercials. Doesn't it always feel like it's the same voice all the time anyway? It turns out that behind the scenes industry is pretty cutthroat, a highly competitive world onto itself, one in which Bell, the director, explains right off the top of her new film, filling in the gap between the why and the who before letting her lightly stewed confection of a film do the talking for itself.
Bell, an actress who for years has graced many a film and television show as second fiddle, best friend and caricatured harridan (she played Alec Baldwin's shrewish younger wife in the Meryl Streep comedy
It's Complicated for instance), exhibits an uncanny ear for dialogue. Both natural and not, she scripts her debut
In a World... with a charming ping towards the screwball, but reveals quiet and graceful layers of depth and perhaps even a bit of power within her sharply constructed dialogue. And as her film-- on face value a slickly quirky independent comedy-- focuses on a microcosm of the industry, it unearths caustic questions and presents difficult to mine themes with ease and confidence.
