In A World

In a world where you rarely hear female voices intone movie trailers, a female writer, director, actor and producer has created a winning comedy ...about just such a world.
Multitasker Lake Bell plays Carol Solomon, a vocal coach and daughter of a famous trailer voiceover artist (Fred Melamed), who wants to break into the lucrative and forbidding world of movie preview announcers. But she has her work cut out for her because, like many subdivisions in entertainment, this is a boy's club, full of territorial macho men who will not let women in.
The movie is a prickly romantic comedy, and a smart, satirical look at an industry within an industry. All that unseen voice talent is like a mini-Hollywood with its own prestigious awards, celebrities, groupies and backstabbing competitiveness. Surrounded by a good cast of comedy stalwarts like Demetri Martin (super sweet as the romantic interest), Tig Notaro, Ken Marino, Micaela Watkins, Rob Corddry, Nick Offerman and some fun celebrities, big and small, in cameo roles, Bell tells a rambling story that still coalesces satisfyingly in the end. I wish that Bell, who is lovely and funny, if a bit mannered, had squeezed more fun out of the voices and the accents, but I really enjoyed that she took time to plunge into some real pain, as in an affair her sister has with an Irish man and her ensuing despair over it, or the nasty narcissism of her dad. In a world where so many movies are always about the same thing (guys with tights and cape or gun fetishes), it's refreshing to find a comedy with a great premise, a smart female protagonist and a shaggy charm.