‘Poetic License’: You Can’t Look Away From Cooper Hoffman

There’s an early scene in Poetic License, Maude Apatow’s directorial debut, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival over the weekend, in which an idiosyncratic college senior with family money, played by Cooper Hoffman, floats the idea of creating a LinkedIn account. His best friend, a comparatively buttoned-up economics student named Sam (Andrew Barth Feldman), asks Hoffman’s Ari what he would write on it. Ari chews on the question for a beat, a quizzical expression on his face as it morphs subtly from curiosity to bafflement to worry to contentment. Finally, he retracts his flight of fancy: “Never mind.” There aren’t many actors doing intense character work between the setup and punch line of a joke. In Poetic License , Hoffman establishes himself as one of them.