In a World... (2013)

A quirky comedy based around the high flying world of the voice actor, well the trailer looked quirky. A small budget film whose main star wrote, co-produced and directed the feature.

I saw the trailer for this and really thought it would be a good funny comedy...which it is kinda, but not entirely. The plot revolves around a small family in LA, the father is a famous voice artist and his daughter is aspiring to follow in his footsteps. From this we get the main crux of the film, the voice over business for movie trailers in Hollywood is typically a male dominated field, but that is now being challenged by this young woman, the horror!.

That is the films main plot, there are other sub plots revolving around other family members, the sister and her other half, the mother and a few friends. But to be truthful none of these are interesting and feel more like padding around the main story. I found this to be the problem with the film really, the main story is the most interesting bit, yet we don't get a great deal on it, its all about family issues which is boring.

We do get to know another preening voice actor played by Marino who makes a big difference. Alongside Melamed (a real voice artist) both men save the film in my view, watching these guys swan around as if they were the biggest thing in Hollywood is priceless. The dialog from Melamed's character at times is so egotistical, even when aimed at his own daughter, its both amusing and embarrassing to watch.

Even though the films premise is about an area in show business that is barely touched upon that doesn't really mean its interesting. The whole idea is about women being the underdog in this field, that its unheard of for women to do voice work for a major film trailer, equal rights for women and such. One thing that went through my mind was all these people are wealthy from doing not much at all because I don't call voice acting work. So are we suppose to be emotionally involved? are we suppose to get behind the female lead here? are we suppose to care about this irrelevant showbiz injustice? because frankly I didn't care at all. I didn't care about any of the characters really, I found many of them annoying and most were overacting to the camera, especially the films director and lead Lake Bell.

You may think I'm being harsh, after all this film won awards at Sundance and was dribbled over by all the critics. Its not a bad film, far from it, its original and fresh, its warm and has some good performances, but its dull and uninteresting accept for the odd scene. Its not a self-serving inside Hollywood type of film, it does mock Hollywood gently. Funny thing is we the regular folk all know they don't actually mean it, these showbiz folk 'mock' but they lap the lifestyle up really. In my opinion the film only comes to life as we near the end which gives you what the entire film has been building up to. Other than that watching all these people live their semi rich lives in sunny LA does nothing for me.

5/10