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We know Carol (Lake Bell), or better yet, I should say we are familiar with the type of character that Carol resembles. She’s a talented, slightly underachieving sort with an easy charm and no plans beyond the given day. Carol’s got a good gig as a vocal coach, helping stars like Eva Longoria (actually appearing as Eva Longoria, no less) work through re-dubs of tricky accents that didn’t quite work during initial shooting. Carol’s on the inside of the industry, but she’s not anywhere close to the inside track.

Of course, Carol has an ace in the hole. Her father, Sam (Fred Melamed) is a voiceover legend, known within those tighter circles near the center of things as the man behind the Man – that would be Don LaFontaine, the voice behind the catchphrase, “In a world…” – and Sam’s thinking about making a play to step into the big shoes left behind upon LaFontaine’s death. He’s cautious though, because he’s on the cusp of earning a lifetime achievement honor (for being, you know, the guy behind the Guy), and maybe it’s time to move on, to pass the torch to the next generation, which to his mind, the heir apparent would be Gustav (Ken Marino), a trust-fund baby with style and potential, if only he could get over himself and his desire to live out the past glories of the wild and fast life of being a player.

The thing about Carol though is she and Sam don’t have the greatest of relationships. It’s not dangerously dysfunctional; in fact, Carol lives with Sam, until the day he decides that its time to move his younger girlfriend Jamie (Alexandra Holden) on a more permanent basis, which forces Carol to retreat to the home of her older sister Dani (Michaela Watkins) and her husband Moe. Carol and Dani realize their father probably wanted a son all along, but he loves what he’s been stuck with. There’s a stronger connection with Carol thanks to her talent, although he’s quick to point out to her that she will never get far in the business because of the whole gender thing. It’s a harsh thing to say, but that’s the business and there’s nothing he can do about it. The mere act of expressing it though feels like a bludgeon that he has used on Carol her whole life, in one way or another.

Somehow, despite the specter of institutional sexism, Carol gets a break. While helping Eva Longoria re-dub lines with sound recorder Louis (Demetri Martin) who has the worst thinly-disguised crush on Carol in the history of thinly-disguised emotions, she offers to do a temp track on a trailer for a romantic comedy involving kids – the next big trend – which leads to more work and a chance to compete for the coveted opportunity to intone the immortal words, “In a world…”

This film is fascinating indie comedy, the kind that doesn’t come right out and define itself as a romantic comedy (although there are romantic entanglements everywhere) or as a breakout for an emerging star (although, once again, it features a multi-hyphenate turn from writer-director-star Lake Bell who, in support of the film, has gone so far as to appear, virtually nekkid, on the cover of New York magazine while glad-handing every late-night host on the planet). In A World… is rooted in idiosyncrasies of the the mundane everyday variety, even though it takes place in the world of film.

Yet, there is a sense of daring in Bell’s philosophical execution because she has created in Carol, a female reflection of a more entrenched traditional type. Carol is akin to the Seth Rogen characters in Knocked Up and Funny People, those Judd Apatow guys who fumble along and discover themselves, their truer selves in the human comedy that is everyday life. As an executive producer for the HBO series Girls, Apatow has hitched himself up with Lena Dunham’s distaff vision of this current generation, but there would seem to be a disconnect, a jagged teeth-grinding abrasiveness in the pairing that wouldn’t exist in a union with Bell.

In her World, there isn’t a brazen revealing of inner wounds, a willingness to push one’s self to extremes, those far corners beyond what is familiar to audiences. We see Carol, as we saw would-be father Ben Stone (in Knocked Up) and/or the joke-writing Ira Wright (from Funny People), as someone we might encounter in a coffee shop or at a table across from us in a restaurant, the kind of person who, under the right circumstances, we might find ourselves striking up a conversation with and really getting to know them. Carol could be a member of our inner circle, our crew, our family of friends.

And it is far more exciting to acknowledge that Bell can manage to do all that in spite of our expectations, from an industry that doesn’t want us to feel that way about the women we see onscreen. We have been conditioned to see women as objects, It-Girls, characters in name only who exist to support and back up male protagonists, not as everyday people with their own dreams and arcs. I sometimes wish for films where black folks can mix and wander through more integrated spaces – the black, white, and blues of diverse everyday life – and it seems as if Bell has the same desire for women.

I like that she was brave enough to bring that World to life.