Movie Reviews: In a World... (2013) and Things Never Said (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

As Carol Solomon, Lake Bell plays a vocal coach whose only work prospect at the moment is coaching actress Eva Longoria on a cockney accent for a movie she has to completely re-loop.

Longoria: Is that what you think you stupid slapper?
Carol: "Fink." Switch out the "t-h" for an "f'."
Longoria: Is that what you fink you stupid slapper?

It's a thankless task, made worse by the fact that Carol's dad Sam (Fred Melamed) believes it's the closest she'll come to following in his famed footsteps. Dad is a semi-retired movie trailer voice-over artist operating under the stage name Sam Sotto. His assertions of few opportunities for women in his line of work are constant and dispiriting. But Carol makes her own breaks, and is soon pursuing a career holy grail, to resurrect the cliché opener for many film previews, "In a world...", words that haven't been uttered over a trailer since the passing of the man most associated with the phrase, Don La Fontaine. The slight yet ingenious premise of In a World... allows Bell, who also wrote and directed, to craft a hilariously original comedy that feels like a Christopher Guest-directed mockumentary with an eccentric Annie Hall-type at its center.

Movie Review: Wanderlust (2012)

by Tony Dayoub

When recent coverage of the Judd Apatow/David Wain comedy Wanderlust turned to the age-old subject of whether Jennifer Aniston had gone topless in the movie, I was sure the comedy was a dud. After all, last time that subject came up, it turned out to be a last ditch publicity stunt to drum up a larger audience for Aniston's truly witless Horrible Bosses. This kind of fruitless bait-and-switch tactic (she keeps her shirt on in both films) is usually good for only a short-term bump; disappointed pervs start slamming a movie that much harder after failing to score a look at the actress's boobs. And for the more discerning of us, reliance on such promotions are a tip-off that a bad movie is desperate for attention, any kind of attention. Before Wanderlust started, one woman sitting behind me commented to her prudish friend, "I hope you're prepared for this. I hear it's got lots of nudity," a distracting disclaimer that's never encouraging. Happily, I can report that, though she was right, the ample nudity in Wanderlust is rightly played for laughs, and any temptation to shock audiences into submitting to the movie's charms by way of Aniston's breasts are largely ignored.