The Invite ★★★★
- 2filmcritics
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Availability: In limited release in US (A24 distributor) until July 10, when its showings expand nationwide; showing currently in England and Ireland; elsewhere rolled out in stages. Streaming expected beginning in late August on premium services, and on Max and other subscription services in November or December. See JustWatch here for up-to-date rental and purchase availability.
Guess Who’s Coming for Charcuterie
Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde, one of two couples who comprise the entirety of the cast of “The Invite,” are direct descendants of the Bickersons (Don Ameche and Frances Langford), a married duo who famously spent their 15 minutes of radio airtime (1946- ) in a spirited verbal war—that is, bickering. Fifteen minutes is just a warmup for Joe and Angela (Rogen and Wilde), whose sparring occupies all of the first half-hour or so of “The Invite” and continues, off and on, for the rest of Wilde’s (she also directs) touching, hilarious, and thought-provoking film.
(From left) Olvia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton
comprise the entire cast of this witty serio-comic drama, directed by Wilde.
At least with the Bickersons you knew they were in love. With Joe and Angela it’s not so clear. They’re unhappy, as a couple and with themselves, and neither has found a way to make the other feel worthy and valued. They live in a rather grand San Francisco apartment, which for Joe is a sign of how far he hasn’t come, because it belonged to his parents and he was born in that bed in the bedroom. Once a keyboardist in “The Onslaught,” a 1-hit wonder of the 2000s indie-sleaze rock scene, he teaches music at a school he considers inferior, exhaustedly peddling home up the city’s steep hills on a foldable bicycle that confounds him to a wife who doesn’t appreciate what he’s going through. The apartment’s piano remains untouched. Their bed is where the dirty clothes are lumped under the covers to keep them hidden from sight.
They’re unhappy, as a couple and with themselves, and neither has found a way to make the other feel worthy and valued.
Angela is a neurotic mess, Betty Friedan’s 1950s frustrated housewife, though without the “feminine mystique” to make it even temporarily tolerable. We’ll learn later that she was once in art school, a past now visible only in her strained efforts to decorate the apartment. One room remains unfinished, because she can’t decide which of 3 virtually identical shades of blue would look best. “What do you do all day?” Joe wonders.
Windows link the apartments,
and, as it turns out, the couples.
Though the camera presents Angela as sexually unappealing or at least unapproachable, she cares deeply (too deeply) about how she presents herself. She is repressed, literally buttoned up, and performative—that is, she is not so much being her authentic self as acting out a role that she perceives will make her desirable and elicit the compliments and support she desperately needs.
Angela is repressed, literally buttoned up, and performative.
As the film opens, Angela is setting out an elaborate charcuterie for the couple upstairs, whom she has invited for dinner—apparently a complete surprise for Joe (or so he says), just returned from work. He’s shown up without the wine (“I don’t get texts while I’m cycling”), wants nothing to do with the evening Angela has in mind (“we have to cancel”), and he has a bone to pick with the upstairs folks, whom they know mostly from the building’s elevator and from windows that link the 2 apartments. Let the bickering (and the out-loud laughter in the theater) begin.
Enter the dinner guests....They seem to have mastered life.
Joe and Angela obviously need marriage counseling. Enter the dinner guests, Hawk and Piña, dressed in Euro black (a contrast to Joe’s blue denim and Angela’s almost matching blue top). Self-confident without being too arrogant, they are neither unhappy nor neurotic. They seem to have mastered life. Hawk (Edward Norton, playing against his macho image) is a retired firefighter (don’t say “fireman!”—one of the film’s many running jokes) who has something of the truth-teller/sage about him, a hint of Plato’s philosopher-king. He’s also training to be a licensed Rolfer (a sign of things to come). Piña (Penélope Cruz, playing against a history of being just a pretty woman), is over-the-top, heavily made up, blond-hair beautiful, sexy, and smart. Hawk and Piña are literally therapists: Hawk a budding physical therapist, with a Socratic air; Piña a practicing psycho-therapist.
Hawk and Piña are not without their own needs and desires—which will surprise and shock some filmgoers.
Prepared to dispense advice (which they will), Hawk and Piña also provide the sort of affirmations that Joe and Angela have failed to offer each other: Joe will be praised for (finally) “telling it like it is” (though Joe, too, will withhold), Angela for her taste in carpets (or, as Joe says, “rugs”) and unrequited artistic sensibilities. Angela will get opportunities to emote, tearing up while imagining their only child going away to college—6 years in the future. Hawk and Piña are not without their own needs and desires—which will surprise and shock some filmgoers, as they do Angela and especially Joe, whose libido is buried beneath a landslide of self-doubt and self-contempt.
As this subplot (shades of “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice,” updated 50+ years for the 21st century) is played out, we’ll learn that Hawk and Piña, too, have revealing backstories, and that Joe and Angela have a powerful origin story, of which Joe is, until Angela tells it, fatefully unaware. Hawk and Piña will have their “Bickersons” moment, perhaps to keep them from being too cloying, or to reveal their own vulnerabilities, and everyone except Piña at some point will be told to “shut up.” Schluppy Joe will discover that Hawk was once named Howard, the source of much mockery and mirth for Joe, as he probes the authenticity of this odd couple.
The audience will be grateful that the tone turns to slapstick as things get out of hand because, well, there are developments one would rather not take seriously. It’s Piña who delivers the evening’s lesson, a lesson, disappointing in its simplicity if not unexpected, about free will: stop feeling sorry for yourselves, “grow up big pig(s),” get into self-renewal. Or else. Will Joe and Angela take it to heart?
The clever, funny, poignant, and non-stop talky screenplay is by Rashida Jones and her frequent collaborator Will McCormack.
There’s not much time to find out, and it hardly matters; the “message,” as it were, is icing on the cake of the clever, funny, poignant, and non-stop talky screenplay by Rashida Jones (daughter of Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton) and her frequent collaborator Will McCormack (“Toy Story 4,” 2019), based on a play by Spain’s Cesc Gay and his adapted 2020 Spanish film, “The People Upstairs.”
One would imagine that the play-like feel of the film (almost all of it set in the apartment), staffed with 4 much-traveled actors, would result in a production at once artificial, distracting, and predictable. The acting and the script are too good for that. Rogen and Wilde are delightful as Joe and Angela, both strong and both wrong, two flawed, somewhat manic human beings trying to figure out how to make sense of themselves and their marriage while wringing a modicum of happiness from lives that didn’t quite pan out. Norton and Cruz function in part as intriguing and refreshing ”straight men” while bringing a curious calm to the dinner party, even as they present their downstairs neighbors with a proposal they can’t (or won’t) refuse. A serio-comic gem.
He says: “The Invite” defied my low-to-medium expectations. Never has therapy been so much fun.
She says: A laugh a minute, and yet, as you exit the theater, you can’t help but evaluate your own relationship.
Date: 2026
Director: Olivia Wilde
Starring: Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Edward Norton, Penélope Cruz
Country: United States
Languages: English, some Spanish (no subtitles)
Runtime: 107 minutes
Other Awards: 7 nominations to date
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