One could cynically look at the credits for the film Poetic License and dismiss it outright. It was directed by Maude Apatow, daughter of Judd, and stars, among others, Apatow’s mother, Leslie Mann, Cooper Hoffman (son of Philip Seymour Hoffman), and Nico Parker (daughter of Thandiwe Newton and film-maker Ol Parker). On paper it all looks like a make-work project to keep the well-connected busy and creatively fulfilled. But the film itself – Apatow’s debut – is rich and lively enough to make none of the nepo stuff really matter.
Written by Raffi Donatich, Poetic License concerns a family who have moved from Chicago to a sleepy university town where economist James (Cliff “Method Man” Smith), has secured a plum professorship. He’s busy getting started, which leaves his wife Liz (Mann) a bit lonely and unmoored in her new life. Making matters worse is the inevitable drifting away of her high school-senior daughter, Dora (Parker), whose effort to make friends at her new school means she has to spend a little less time with mom. Liz is prone to a little risk, and so when two college boys, Sam and Ari, who are in the poetry class she’s auditing begin soliciting a friendship, she throws caution to the wind and accepts.
