When
was the last time you heard a female voice over on a trailer for a
coming attraction? Okay, let’s go for an easier question like when was
the last time you saw a film with a father who is a male chauvinist
whose thinks daughters should be seen and not heard? How about an easier
question like when was the last time you saw a film starring a person
who also, wrote and directed that film? Did you think it was a vanity
production or that person couldn’t find anyone better to do any of the 3
jobs or possibly they couldn’t afford to pay someone?

“In
The World...” stars Lake Bell as Carol, her debut feature as a writer
and director and who has played secondary roles in movies and
television. In this film she explores the world of voice overs and the
people, mainly men, who make a living at that job. Carol finds herself
in competition with her father Sam (Fred Melamed) who has recently taken
over the mantle as the man with the best voice after the recent star
Don LaFontaine has passed away and Gustav Werner (Ken Marino) his
prodigy. Carol, who had been living with her father, has to move in with
her sister Dani (Michaela Watkins) and brother-in-law Gary (Rob
Corddry) because dad has moved in his much younger, and supposedly
ditzy, girlfriend Jamie (Alexander Holden) while let’s not forget the
guy Louis (Demetri Martin) that is pining after Carol and, of course, is
the last to know it.

There
is no faulting Lake Bell as an actress as she comes across trained to
be a loser but endearing to all, including the audience. As the
screenplay writer she tries to cover too much ground in a 93 minutes
film but it is as a director that she makes too many mistakes with
uncalled for dark shots, holding the camera on the wrong person in many
scenes and not focusing the story with her actors. There is a lot going
on here besides the father-daughters situation, the competition, sister
and husband having a marital crisis, Carol getting unnecessarily
involved with Gustave, the lack of good jobs for women in an industry
that exploits them plus showing Carol giving voice lessons to various
actresses including Eva Longoria. It is very seldom that I have seen a
bad performance by an actor---hey, I liked Russell Crowe in “Les
Miserables”!--in a film and there isn’t one here.

The
main fault of “In a World...” is that it takes 90 minutes in a 93
minute film to get to the payoff and getting there is very slow and
unfunny though those last 3 minutes are touching.