Lake Bell is a great new talent - In a World...

In a World ... is a totally charming and enjoyable movie, and so what if it's essentially a romantic soap bubble?, Lake Bell (writer, director, star, anything more?) has created a set of really likable young characters, quirky and shy and vulnerable and trying like so many young adults for success and happiness, not even aware of how fine and funny they are and can be - and all that in a film about the movie industry? How unusual. Well, it's an unusual take on the industry - not about the stars and brat packers, this is not a Sophia Coppola project in other words, but about the work horses of the industry, in this case about the voice-over specialists - in particular, the ones who narrate movie trailers. These guys have their own pecking order and aspirations and rituals and petty rivalries, which Bell captures and with which she skewers some of the bigger egos. Center of the story is Bell's character, a 31-year-old doing bit work as a voice coach and trying to break into the major voice-over business, where he father is a reigning star - who's competitive and jealous, even of her - he tells her in particular there's no place for a woman's voice in major-studio trailers. Of course, they end up auditioning for the same major gig: voice-over for a series of The Amazon Games modeled on you know what - and you probably know what will happen, too - not a lot of surprises in this movie, just a lot of delightful and touching moments, including funny cameos from Gina Davis and Eva Longoria. Bell is a surprising sudden arrival of major talent, and I would say she could be part of a grand trilogy of current woman comedy writer-actor-directors, alongside Tina Fey and Kristen Wiig.