It comes as a surprise that a member of the Apatow family didn’t actually write “Poetic License,” which marks the directorial debut of Maude Apatow and has a role tailor-made for her mother Leslie Mann’s dramatic and comedic range, and can easily be read as a continuation of the tough love relationship that’s been reflected in the films of patriarch Judd since he started putting them together in his movies starting with “Knocked Up.” Despite the grief that she and sister Iris have given their mom onscreen to get a laugh, Maude’s true feelings towards Mann appear in how radiantly and sympathetically she presents Liz, who has recently resettled after her husband (Cliff “Method Man” Smith) has taken a professorship at Braddock University and her daughter Dora (Nico Parker) is entering her final year of high school with plenty on her mind as she adjusts to new surroundings, leaving her with plenty of free time when her practice as a therapist was left back at her old home. Having the ability to take any classes she’d like at the small liberal arts college thanks to her husband’s job, Liz enrolls in a poetry course where she instantly attracts a pair of classmates in Ari (Cooper Hoffman) and Sam (Andrew Barth Feldman), best friends since they were roommates as freshmen.
There might not be a whole lot of beauty in the phrasing that the trio come up with in class, but Apatow and screenwriter Raffi Donatich gracefully marry complex characters with even more intricate comic set-ups in the film where all involved fear for what their next chapter will look like when the people in their lives appear to be moving on without them. A quasi-love triangle develops when Ari becomes infatuated with Liz from the second he sees her Volvo, signaling the kind of maturity and refinement he believes himself to have (in one of many delusions), and he does have at least a feeling in common with her as Sam has picked up a girlfriend (Maisy Stella) and a potential career at Morgan Stanley after doing well at his summer internship. Liz doesn’t contemplate any romance with either of them, but she does immediately spark to Sam, who helps her out as a caterer of a terrible faculty function she has to attend with her husband and she can’t help but be worn down by Ari as well when he has that effect on people, and while she doesn’t lead either on, she doesn’t make a secret of liking the attention that she isn’t getting from her family at home.
The idea that anyone is underappreciated is as unthinkable within the story as it is a part of the fabric in which “Poetic License” unfolds when Apatow is careful to make sure no such thing happens with her cast, allowing Method Man to show a softer side of himself as an economist “who’s dangerous on the pickleball court” and featuring Hoffman in a genuinely sexy part as he tries to sneakily seduce Liz. A real strength of the film becomes how everyone, well-intentioned as they may be, expresses the anxieties they aren’t entirely conscious of into their concern for others when Liz’s meddling into her daughter’s life can be annoying at the same time as her love for her shines through and Ari’s interpretation of Sam’s relationships outside of theirs as a threat is consistently revealing as it is amusing. Apatow impressively builds towards crescendos of both emotional epiphanies and killer punchlines, often in the same blow, with the skill of a seasoned pro, and it’s a rare first-time filmmaker who gets to place their footage in the hands of editor Jay Cassidy, who regularly finds grace in the chaos of David O. Russell films and surely helps deliver the same panache here. Although no one in “Poetic License” is asked to rhyme, there’s a truly special poignance in the symmetry of the film with real life as both Liz and Dora take their separate paths towards a new chapter in their life and offscreen, Apatow and Mann are able to do the same together and it gives the comedy a quality that, as its characters fumble around for the right words, shows that sometimes they fail to do justice anyway.
“Poetic License” will screen again at the Toronto Film Festival on September 12th at 9:30 pm at the Princess of Wales Theatre and September 14th at noon at the Scotiabank.