Totally Belated Movie Review: In a World (2013)

Welcome to my new series, “Totally Belated Movie Reviews”, where I will review movies months, sometimes years, after they were released.

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For Lent this year I decided it’s time to declutter my Netflix queue so until Easter I won’t be adding anything to my list. Rather, I’ll be making a point to watch content that has been languishing there for months or years. This decision brought me to Saturday night where once again I was left with the difficult decision of how exactly to waste my time on the Internet and I found, waiting for me in the depths of my queue, In a World, a movie first released in 2013.

In a World is a devastatingly clever comedy following a female voice-over artist, starring, written, and directed by Lake Bell. The movie deftly tells a story that is very much about gender without being a movie that is “about gender.” The plot largely revolves around the competition for a particular voice-over role that will resurrect the famed movie trailer line “in a world.” The competition is between a well-known voice-over artist, his male protégé, and his daughter. The movie's main story is, of course, grounded in the resulting family drama.

Carol Solomon, the film’s protagonist, is a vocal coach and daughter of Sam Soto, a fictional, famed voice-over actor. Carol emotionally grounds the film and her struggles to break into the voice-over big leagues mirror the struggles of many women to achieve the highest degrees of success in any field. While the film pays attention to this element, it largely focuses instead of the relationships of the characters, making it an emotionally compelling film on multiple levels. However, in one of the movies overtly feminist moments, a Hollywood producer played by Geena Davis, one of Hollywood's leading feminist voices, levels with Carol about the importance of hearing women’s voices and in that moment the strongest message of the film could not be more clear. That message, to quote Davis’ character directly, is that, “Whether the general public choose to acknowledge it or not, voice over matters.”

In a World is certainly right about that. Voice over matters. It’s one more place that media manages to tell women that we don’t take up 50% of the space on this Earth. Whether we realize it or not, women are bombarded with that message. In voice over work, in movie crowd scenes, even on the subway, women are given less than 50%, less than their share. And while these instances may seem relatively innocuous in and of themselves, when we zoom out on them and consider the other places where women don’t take up 50% of the space (looking at you, Congress) or where women’s voices aren’t heard, it becomes obvious that these “little” things matter.

In a World drives that point home, and it does so quite elegantly and with plenty of humor. All in all, In a World is a stellar movie featuring all of my favorite things including Geena Davis, powerful feminist messages, snappy dialogue, and, of course, Eva Longoria trying to master a Cockney accent. That’s why I totally belatedly give this movie an A.