Ha ha, Burl here with a quick review of another of the
quirky contemporary indie comedy-dramas I sometimes find myself watching! You
know, like Jack Goes Boating or Our Idiot Brother! Usually some
pleasures can be wrung from these pictures, though none of them ever become My
New Favourite Movie or anything, ha ha! No, not even close!
I was interested in seeing this one, In A World…, because it appeared to take place within the tight
universe of voiceover actors, and anytime a movie peers into some highly
specialized society, ol’ Burl is interested! On that front In A World… does not disappoint! It instead provides all manner of
anthropological detail about the inner workings of this community, of its
rituals and its hierarchies and its desperate competitions!
The lead character,
Carol, is played by a pretty lady called Lake Bell, who also wrote and directed
the picture! Carol’s dad, Sam, is a monstrous egotist who happens to be one of
the premier voiceover fellows in the business! Ha ha! Carol works with her
voice too, but is limited in what she can do since the voiceover world is about
the most male-dominated bastion outside the priesthood – and much less chaste,
ha ha!
The plot is pretty loose, but it involves a search for a new
voiceover person to narrate the trailer of a big new youth action picture! Don
LaFontaine, the master of using the words “In a world…” to open his trailers,
is dead, yet the producers (led by Geena Davis from Fletch in a cameo) want to use this opportunity to bring the phrase back! So
it’s a big deal in the community, and both Sam and his protégé, the slimy
Gustav, have reasonable expectations of snagging the job!
Meanwhile other things happen! There’s a subplot involving
relationship troubles between Carol’s sister and her husband, who’s played by
Rob Corddry from The Way Way Back!
There’s a budding romance between Carol and a shellheaded comedian! And the
picture spends a lot of (quite welcome) time documenting Carol’s
eccentricities, and her habit of taping people with interesting voices! This
habit proves useful in the later moments of the film!
It’s an interesting world, as I say, and there are appealing
characters galore and plenty of funny moments; but like so many of these
pictures, it ultimately comes off as just a slightly refined, mildly more hip
version of a laugh-track sitcom from the 90s! I’m not sure what it is – I enjoy
the films while they’re on, or at least I don’t mind watching them, but at the
end I’m all “Hm! Ha ha!” They don’t linger in the memory the way many far worse
movies often do!
Perhaps this is my problem and not the film’s, but, ha ha,
this is my movie review, so it can go throw sticks! I hope that doesn’t sound
mean! I want to be fair, and there was a lot I liked about the picture, after
all! I think Lake Bell is talented and will probably make more movies, and in
that she has my goodwill! Meanwhile, I give In
A World… two tips, tips as in gratuities! Ha ha!
This is such a good idea for a movie, original and full of potential, so it's strange it wasn't all that great, the jokes just weren't there and the relationships you could get in any indie schmindie drama. That blockbuster she's competing to narrate the trailer for looks nothing like any blockbuster I've ever seen! Missed opportunity, I thought.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you! I haven't thought about the movie much since watching it, but to the extent I have, I like it less each time! Still, an original and interesting premise is more than many such movies offer these days, so I've got to give it that!
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