| In a large apartment in San Francisco, Angela (Olivia Wilde) is busy getting their place ready for a dinner party with their upstairs neighbours. Joe (Seth Rogen) comes home from work and just wants to lie on the floor; he has a sore back, the new bike his wife got him is impractical and small, and he forgot to pick up wine for tonight’s dinner party. Angela insists she told him about it yesterday, he doesn’t believe her. | | 2026
Directed by: Olivia Wilde
Screenplay by: Will McCormack, Rashida Jones
Starring: Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton
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While Angela and Joe are bickering about everything and Joe complaining about his loud, overly-friendly neighbours who he does not like but Angela is mesmerized by, Pina (Penelope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton) are at the door. Angela is ready to play the role of the perfect suburban housewife who lives in the middle of the city instead of the suburbs. Joe isn’t even planning on being polite, but Pina and Hawk’s honesty and genuineness catches him off guard.
The many cracks in Angela and Joe’s marriage play for laughs, mostly because Seth Rogen’s Joe who is the grouchy and selfish one is also the most honest one. As I was trying to decide if this is Seth Rogen’s funniest performance of his career, I had to conclude that it’s the funniest performances of Olivia Wilde’s and Edward Norton’s careers. When the dinner party starts trending upwards with the reveal of Pina and Hawk’s progressive sex life, Angela finally becomes unguarded and frequently makes wide-eyed glances or furtive smiles.
The bulk of this movie is a comedy; for the first two-thirds, audiences will be laughing uncontrollably as Angela’s lies come undone, or Joe attempting to be rude is calmly rebuked by Hawk. For the final third, Pina plays the role of a therapist as the many obvious cracks in Joe and Angela’s marriage become massive fissures.
Olivia Wilde made her directorial debut seven years ago with the smart, funny and highly-acclaimed Booksmart, but when her follow-up Don’t Worry Darling only made a splash in the tabloids instead, her reputation took a big hit; however, The Invite has completely revived it. She mentioned being influenced by Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men, a one-location film where the camera angles can shift perspective. The apartment set-up in The Invite allows for characters to be in different rooms but still being influenced by each other. And in the final devastating scene, the camera is both as close as you can get and as far away as you can get to really drive home the consequences of this fateful dinner party.
The Invite is ultimately a relationship dramedy. Bitingly hilarious and then emotional and sad, it’s one of the best explorations of a marriage in years.
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