The Invite
Olivia Wilde’s third directorial outing is distinguished by terrific performances and an enormously witty, wise and piquant screenplay from Will McCormack and Rashida Jones.
Who’s Afraid of Olivia Wilde?: Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton.
Image courtesy of Black Bear Pictures.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry. Perhaps no truer a sentiment was coined (by Oscar Wilde) to sum up the circumstances of Angela and Joe. Seth Rogen plays Joe, whose unmistakable laugh can be heard over the opening production logos, although he is not laughing for long. In fact, the opening image is of Joe sitting in an empty auditorium looking as grim as death. His heart isn’t in it. He is facing a young ensemble of musicians and after giving his students a half-hearted appraisal, he stumbles out of the hall while trying to navigate his fold-up bike (which he has yet to work out how to fold). By the time Joe arrives home, having cycled the steep hills of San Francisco, he is in no mood to be told by his wife that guests are arriving for dinner in ten minutes.
The Invite is an American remake of the Spanish comedy The People Upstairs (2020), which has already been remade in Italy, Switzerland, France and South Korea. But this phenomenon is not new. The Italian comedy-drama Perfect Strangers (2016), which also revolves around a revelatory dinner party, has been remade 24 times in ten years, although an English language version has yet to surface. Here, we have but four characters – played by Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, Edward Norton and the film’s director Olivia Wilde – in what turns into a comic version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, without the alcohol. There’s no alcohol due to the fact that Joe has failed to pick up the wine on his way home because, like so many husbands, he just doesn’t listen. Joe is also disrespectful, boorish, insensitive, rude and sex-starved, a loser who has decided to be miserable. His wife Angela (Olivia Wilde) is a different creature. She is organised, hard-working, open-minded, highly-strung, accommodating, artistic, perhaps a little controlling, and sex-starved.
It’s quite rare these days to come across a film at the multiplex which features grown-up, multi-levelled characters, and rarer still to encounter four first-rate actors provided with such intelligent and often startling dialogue. Olivia Wilde, who previously directed Booksmart and Don’t Worry Darling, has found her creative feet with this comic jewel and manages to choreograph the constantly fluctuating tonal shifts with consummate aplomb.
Contained within a single city apartment, the drama never once feels stagey – even though the original film was based on a play – thanks to Yorgos Mavropsaridis and Anthony Boys’ dexterous editing, Devonté Hynes’ edgy and prickly score and the quartet of fine players. Marital strife has been the fuel for several black comedies of late (cf. The Roses, Over Your Dead Body), but what The Invite brings to the table is so much more – credible human beings. Each guest at dinner, be they hosting or attending, comes with a complex agenda and a back story and an elephant in the room. As perhaps we all do. There are terrific lines here, too, lines that don’t feel written, such as when Joe and Angela try to fathom Penélope Cruz’s pronunciation of the word ‘compassion’, an essential ingredient, she believes, in a sexual liaison. All good dialogue is built on different perspectives, misunderstandings and emotional camouflage, and there’s all this and more in abundance, thanks to Will McCormack and Rashida Jones’ wise and electrifying script.
Comic timing is also the film’s ace card and as an actress Olivia Wilde has given herself the best double takes. “Who doesn’t love anal?” she splutters at one point. “Holidays. Special occasions,” Joe chimes in obligingly. But Penélope Cruz’s Piña is an altogether more philosophical being: “Sex is not a thing you do; it’s a place you go.” And Edward Norton as the firefighter from upstairs has seldom been funnier. He can turn a line like, “I love rugs – so much, it’s a problem,” into an unexpected moment of hilarity. I can’t remember the last time I have laughed so much in a cinema.
Cast: Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penélope Cruz, Edward Norton.
Dir Olivia Wilde, Pro Ben Browning, Megan Ellison and David Permut, Screenplay Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, Ph Adam Newport-Berra, Pro Des Jade Healy, Ed Yorgos Mavropsaridis and Anthony Boys, Music Devonté Hynes, Costumes Arianne Phillips, Sound Niv Adiri.
Invite Productions, Inc./Annapurna Pictures/FilmNation Entertainment/Permut Presentations-Black Bear Pictures.
106 mins. USA. 2026. UK Rel: 3 July 2026. US Rel: 10 July 2026. Cert. 15.
