The Invite ☆☆☆☆

Starring: Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Edward Norton
and Penélope Cruz

Directed by: Olivia Wilde

hen Olivia Wilde made her feature directorial debut with 2019’s Booksmart, it marked the introduction of an exciting new comedic director and showed us that Wilde was even more talented behind the camera. Booksmart had an incredible cast, was playful, touching and also inventive in ways that made it one of the best teen comedies in years. Understandably, the anticipation was high for Wilde’s second film, Don’t Worry Darling, but the film was marred with nonstop gossip about conflicts on and off the set, not to mention a script that wasn’t as effective as it could be to sell its “big twist.”

With The Invite, Wilde’s third feature as director, it’s wonderful to see the Wilde we got from Booksmart again. At its core, this dramatic comedy feels like a more natural progression of Wilde’s style than Don’t Worry Darling did, finding just the right tone that leads to big laughs, but also moments of surprising emotional heft. Wilde, working with a script by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack (whose last film together was the wonderful Celeste & Jesse Forever in 2012), goes back to basics, telling a more character-focused story that relies heavily on dialogue, character revelations and smart dynamics.

When we first meet married couple Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Wilde), it doesn’t take long for them to begin fighting. As Joe returns to his apartment after working as a music professor, he finds that Angela is planning a dinner with their upstairs neighbours, which he doesn’t remember being told about. It’s clear that Angela wants to impress these neighbours, but Joe just wants to have a quiet night, not entertain the couple whose loud noises have consistently infiltrated their home. As the pair fight about this get-together, the door rings and they are met by their neighbours Hawk (Edward Norton) and Pina (Penélope Cruz).

Hawk and Pina are extremely open, addressing the fight they heard from the hallway almost immediately.

Hawk is a former firefighter who is fairly pretentious, a fact which Joe doesn’t hide his disdain for while Pina is a therapist who met Hawk during one of their sessions. At first, this meeting of couples is awkward and going poorly, as Angela tries too hard and Joe seems set on bringing up how Hawk and Pina’s loudness infiltrate their home. But then, Hawk and Pina reveal their very open interests and this party takes a turn that Joe and Angela likely didn’t expect.

The Invite keeps its cast to just these four characters and except for the film’s introduction, the entire film takes place in the home of Joe and Angela. The entirety of this film relies on how these four play together here and it’s an absolutely fantastic ensemble. Every character has a completely different vibe with each of the other three cast members and watching how everything shifts and changes over the course of the film is a blast. For example, Joe is exhausted by Angela, annoyed by Hawk and curiously intrigued by Pina, and it’s fun watching how these characters alter their attitude based on the various character groupings we get here.

Between her role in Gregg Araki’s I Want Your S*x and this, Wilde is giving the best performances of her career in 2026. She’s goofy, uncomfortable and always seems ready to explode when things don’t go her way. After avoiding starring in her first two films, it’s great to see her being both in front of and behind the camera here. Norton is always a delight as this type of pretentious character, whether in his Oscar-nominated performance in Birdman, or his douche island-owner in Glass Onion. But he brings a new level of depth to this type of character, as there’s a reason why he acts the way he does that actually shows just how beautifully fleshed out these characters are, as they have their own history to explore and play with. Cruz has also done some of her best work in recent years, with films like Parallel Mothers, Ferrari and now, The Invite. She’s arguably the most open character here, both playful and indelicate and able to completely shift the tone of this get-together with just the slightest reveal.

But arguably the best performance in this already great cast is Rogen. Maybe more than any other character, we can feel the weight of the past through his performance, whether it’s the frustrations that his marriage causes him, the insecurities he has about being a once-promising musician who is now a teacher or his simple desire to just get baked in his office without having to entertain these two strangers. Especially when the film explores the problems in his marriage to Angela, Rogen really hits the emotional beats beautifully, through a character who is inherently the center of most of the film’s humour.

These characters are so strong because of the screenplay by Jones and McCormack, who are adapting the 2020 Spanish comedy The People Upstairs. It’s a script that truly considers who these four are on their own, as well as who they are together and relishes the ways that these dynamics fundamentally change who they are. As their barriers are lowered, we start to get to the core of the group, and the story only gets stronger. Again, Jones and McCormack proved they excel with this type of relationship-focused dynamics with Celeste & Jesse Forever and it’s a joy that they are back with another feature after more than a decade.

With Jones and McCormack setting The Invite up, there are also plenty of improvisation and additions made by this cast. It undeniably helps that all four of these characters have written and/or directed their own projects in the past and know what this story needs narratively as it plays around. This can lead to hilarious one-liners by Rogen or Norton ostentatiously explaining the difference between three colors that look exactly the same. These four are playing within the wheelhouse of characters they’ve played before, which not only allows them to shine here, but proves that they can ad lib as these characters with ease.

While filming this dialogue-heavy story all within the confines of one apartment might seem relatively easy, it’s far more complex than it looks on paper. Wilde has to find ways to continuously make this space exciting and interesting and she does so perfectly. The way a character stands in a room, how a window looks into another apartment or the cleanliness of a room in comparison to others are all integral to this story and tell us plenty through the set design. It’s also rare for a comedy to look this good, even with this limitation, and with cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra (Good Fortune, The Last Black Man in San Francisco), this manages to be a gorgeously-shot film, always visually pleasing to look at.

But this is all thanks to what Wilde is doing and how brilliantly she handles this subject, whether it’s how she frames someone in a room or how this story continuously feels like it’s growing and growing, right down to how she devises a way to pivot from one room and one story to another. It’s expertly handled by Wilde and her handling of The Invite’s tone, from over-the-top humour to heartbreaking emotional moments, is a reminder of how great Wilde is with comedies with heart like this and Booksmart.

– Courtesy: Collider.com

Rating system: *Not on your life * ½ If you really must waste your time ** Hardly worth the bother ** ½ Okay for a slow afternoon only *** Good enough for a look see *** ½ Recommended viewing **** Don’t miss it **** ½ Almost perfect ***** Perfection