Tell me a story

Don LaFontaine is probably the most famous voiceover actor of all time. Even if you’ve never heard of him, you have heard him before. If you’ve watched TV ads, you’ve heard Don LaFontaine. (He’s voiced hundreds of thousands of TV ads.) If you’ve watched movie trailers in the last fifty years, you’ve heard Don LaFontaine. (He’s voiced over 5,000 of those in his lifetime.) When you think of a movie trailer that begins with the phrase, “in a world,” you’re hearing Don LaFontaine speak them in the way only he could.  It’s no wonder that after he passed away in 2008, his signature phrase was more or less retired. But now Lake Bell is bringing it back.

Lake (who wrote and directed In a World) plays the fictitious character Carol Solomon, a struggling vocal coach who has the mixed fortune of being the daughter of the famous voice actor, Sam Solomon a.k.a Sam Soto (also fictitious and played by Fred Melamed). In the world in which this movie takes place, Sam is the next best thing to Don LaFontaine. That should be great for Carol who has aspirations of working on movie trailers and commercials, but even though her father must have been the one to jump start her fascination with the human voice, he’s too chauvinistic and self-centered to be of any real help. “The industry doesn’t crave a female sound,” he tells her early in the film without a trace of lament.

The sad thing is that he’s not completely wrong. It’s rare for trailers to even use narrators anymore, and it’s even rarer to find one that employs a female sound. Try to think of one. I had to google the subject to find one. (Gone in 60 Seconds from the year 2000 is the example that kept popping up.) While Carol would love to change this streak, she has no idea how to change an industry standard until a chance circumstance allows her to get her foot in the door.

It was fun getting to watch her experience a certain amount of success. Carol is an easily likeable character. She’s quirky in a way that could be unbelievable but ends up being both credible and fun. It doesn’t seem like she ever had to work very hard in her life, what with her successful father and her big sister always there to support her, and so when we see how flighty and out of touch with reality she can be, it makes sense. She’s easily the kind of person who would follow strangers around with a tape recorder just to capture their accents. She also had this way of repeating people’s last words when she was confused that I found absolutely adorable. It’s really easy to root for Carol, especially when you see how her father treats her. That’s why when the movie industry decides it wants to bring back the iconic “In a world,” tag for a new epic series of movies, we want Carol to win the role. And maybe the stakes aren’t super high—her life wouldn’t be ruined or even damaged if she doesn’t land it—but you still want her to accomplish her goals, and not just for her own sake, but for her gender’s sake as well. She could be the first woman ever to voice those words in a trailer!

Lake populates the entire film with well-developed characters. It’s no easy task to give every character in a film strong and clear motivations, but she accomplishes it. We know exactly what Carol wants out of life, even if she’s not sure how to get it, and we know just how her father feels about those goals. Carol lives with her sister Dani (played by Michaela Watkins) and Dani’s husband Moe (played by Rob Corddry), and both of them have their own goals and desires separate from Carol. When we meet Louis (played by Demetri Martin), Carol’s friend and work associate, we know exactly what he wants. It would actually be interesting to follow any of these characters in their daily lives, though they probably wouldn’t be as fun to watch as Carol is.

Maybe it’s because these side characters are so likeable that we end spending a little too much time with them. I’m speaking specifically of Dani and Moe. I’ve enjoyed Rob Corddry’s work for a long time. He can get pretty wacky in a lot of his roles, so it was good seeing him play it more straight-laced here. He’s funny but in a regular guy sort of way. When he and Dani begin to experience marital problems, I was completely engaged, even though their issues really had nothing to do with Carol. In fact you could take out the Dani and Moe storyline completely without changing Carol’s character arc. And that’s a problem. You really shouldn’t be able to take out a huge chunk of a movie without affecting the main story. Otherwise all you have is a fun distraction from the story. I’d have preferred to have spent more time getting an inside look at the voiceover industry. It’s not a topic I’ve really thought about before beyond watching some behind-the-scenes footage of big animated films where celebrities talk in funny voices into microphones in sound booths by themselves. So I enjoyed seeing a party thrown by up-and-coming voice star, Gustav (played by Ken Marino), where all the big voices in Hollywood gather and share industry-related stories. I wish we had even more of this and maybe just more of the mechanics of the industry in general.

Instead the movie chose to focus more on gender issues than the industry which I ended up enjoying anyway because it brought up some important points, like how trends seemed to shift based on age. Sam Soto is the top dog in the voiceover world, old enough to be receiving a lifetime achievement award, and we mostly see him telling his daughters to accept the status quo. The younger Gustav is poised to be the next big star—he’s about ten years older than the 30 year old Carol—and his main concern is bedding her. It’s only Louis, who is roughly Carol’s age, who seems excited about revolutionizing the industry. If things keep progressing this way, as the movie seems to suggest they will, then eventually women will have a more equal footing in the voiceover world as younger generations of men becomes more accustomed to the female sound.

This movie does so much so well despite its flaws, that it’s been rather difficult to rate. It’s original and inventive, and I love how it exposed me to a field I was unfamiliar with. However, the Dani and Moe storyline seems so superfluous, and the whole Gustav part of the story feels incomplete; there is a major scene near the end of the movie where he is conspicuously absent, and things between him and Carol don’t really get resolved. These aren’t huge deals but they’re causing me to waver between three stars and four. I even thought about updating my rating system to include half-stars, but I feel it would just complicate the system, especially since it’s not usually this difficult for me to rate a movie. So for now I give it three stars with the knowledge that this could change upon future viewings.

My Rating

In A World
Director/Writer: Lake Bell (Children’s Hospital [TV])