Gone are the days of the low-stakes, crowd-pleasing studio comedy. Maude Apatow, eldest daughter of writer-producer powerhouse Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, This Is 40), might well revive the genre with her directorial debut Poetic License, an intergenerational romp about a soon-to-be empty nester played by Apatow’s mother, Leslie Mann.
In Poetic License, Mann stars as Liz, a middle-aged former couples counselor whose life is uprooted when her husband (Method Man) accepts a teaching position at a prestigious university and relocates their family to a quaint college town. While her daughter Dora (Nico Parker) starts her senior year of high school and soon distances herself from her mother, Liz decides to spend her free time auditing a poetry course. There she meets Ari (Cooper Hoffman) and Sam (Andrew Barth Feldman), best friends who are immediately infatuated by her presence. They stare amorously when Liz explains her interest in auditing a poetry class: “I finally have a reason to stick this ol’ thing in the oven.”
The dynamics at play here make for an exuberant screwball comedy as the movie unfolds in a series of awkward situations where Liz is constantly out of place. Whether attending pretentious faculty dinners with her husband or interrupting her daughter’s high school hangouts, Liz’s enigmatic personality never quite fits in until Ari and Sam start vying for her attention. The trio (or threesome, as the boys prefer to call it) soon form a charming bond as Liz, seemingly oblivious to their ostentatious flirting, provides motherly advice to them.
More akin to Y Tu Mamá También than Challengers, Poetic License is a refreshingly good-natured addition to the “two boys obsessed with the same woman” canon. Hoffman (Licorice Pizza) and Feldman (No Hard Feelings) are outstanding complements to one another, clumsily bumbling around and finishing each other’s sentences, with Hoffman’s Ari as the free-spirited but mentally unwell foil to Feldman’s Sam, an econ major with a future in banking. Mann, for her part as Liz, shines at the center of the story, effortlessly alluring as she banters with the boys without crossing the line, no matter how much they pursue her.
Apatow’s debut feature, written by fellow first-timer Raffi Donatich, contains many of the hallmarks of her father’s catalogue: family drama, breakneck dialogue, dicey situations, and a satisfying, if a little rushed, resolution. And while Poetic License doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it’s certainly a welcome feat to see something so cozy and familiar on screen again.
