Most marriage stories wait until the divorce papers are served to start the fireworks. They show you the screaming matches, the packed suitcases, and the dramatic exits in the pouring rain. But A24’s new release The Invite looks at something far more terrifying. It focuses on the quiet, agonizing rot of a relationship that hasn't officially ended but has completely run out of things to say.
Directed by Olivia Wilde and written by the screenwriting team of Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, this film uses a messy double date to lay bare the modern marital crisis. It is a remake of Cesc Gay’s 2020 Spanish comedy Sentimental, but it swaps out Madrid for a shadowy, hyper-specific version of San Francisco. What starts as a tense comedy of manners quickly turns into a psychological battleground. It is easily the most stressful, hilariously awkward, and deeply honest adult drama of the summer.
If you want to know whether The Invite is worth your time, the answer depends entirely on your tolerance for secondhand embarrassment. It is a movie that forces you to sit in a room with four incredibly talented actors while they shred the concept of lifelong monogamy to pieces.
The Anatomy of a Disastrous Dinner Party
The setup is deceptively simple. Joe, played with a tired bitterness by Seth Rogen, is a cynical music teacher dealing with chronic back pain and a dying career. His wife Angela, played by Wilde herself, is a ball of compressed nervous energy trying to mask her deep unhappiness by obsessing over domestic perfection. They barely look at each other. When they do speak, it is only to exchange passive-aggressive barbs about unfinished home renovations or their sex life, which has been dead for months.
To smooth over tensions caused by a lengthy apartment remodel, Angela invites their upstairs neighbors down for cheese, charcuterie, and wine. Enter Hawk, an unfiltered firefighter played by Edward Norton, and Pína, a free-spirited therapist played by Penélope Cruz.
Hawk and Pína are everything Joe and Angela are not. They are intensely affectionate, wildly uninhibited, and incredibly loud. The frequent, rhythmic noises coming from their upstairs ceiling are the exact reason Joe has been losing sleep.
The initial interactions are a masterclass in social friction. Angela arranges a pristine, Instagram-worthy charcuterie board, only for Pína to casually mention she does not eat meat or dairy. Yet, in a hilarious contradiction, Pína brings over a homemade flan. This little detail highlights the sharp comedic writing. The script is full of these minor hypocritically human moments.
Once the wine starts flowing, the polite masks fall off entirely. Hawk and Pína do not just ignore social boundaries. They stomp all over them. They see right through the fake domestic bliss that Joe and Angela are putting on. Within an hour, the conversation shifts from awkward neighborhood small talk to an explicit lifestyle proposition. The upstairs couple wants to swap partners.
Why Olivia Wilde Finally Found Her Directing Voice
This is Wilde’s third feature film behind the camera, following the high school comedy Booksmart and the chaotic sci-fi thriller Don't Worry Darling. Those earlier films showed promise, but they often felt over-stylized or structurally scattered. The Invite is where she finally achieves true artistic maturity.
On paper, a one-location movie adapted from a stage play can easily feel stagy and claustrophobic. Wilde avoids this trap by directing the hell out of the apartment space. She relies heavily on steadicam work, moving smoothly through the rooms to track the changing alliances between the characters.
The lighting choices deserve special mention. Instead of a bright, generic Hollywood comedy look, cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra drowns the apartment in a gloomy, low-lit shadow world. The deep blues and muted oranges mirror the emotional state of the central couple. Angela has spent years trying to pick the perfect paint colors and furniture to fix her life, but the camera refuses to let her hide behind those superficial distractions.
Then there is the musical score by Devonté Hynes. A standard comedy would use light, whimsical music to cue the laughs. Hynes goes the exact opposite route. He builds a pounding, anxiety-inducing wall of sound that feels like it belongs in a war film. Every time a joke lands poorly or Joe gets visibly uncomfortable, the music tightens the screws on the audience. By the time the soundtrack transitions into the seductive tones of Georges Bizet’s Carmen, the auditory tension is almost unbearable.
Seth Rogen and Edward Norton Face Off
The success of a four-hander like this rests entirely on the chemistry of its cast. Fortunately, all four leads are doing incredible work, playing against their usual typecast expectations.
Actor Character Core Conflict
Seth Rogen Joe A bitter, checked-out music teacher facing middle-age stagnation.
Olivia Wilde Angela A high-strung housewife desperate for validation and desire.
Edward Norton Hawk An intensely blunt firefighter who rejects social norms.
Penélope Cruz Pína An earthy, observant therapist who acts as a sensual disruptor.
Seth Rogen delivers one of the most grounded performances of his career. He keeps his signature affable, schlubby everyman charm, but he laces it with a heavy dose of resentment. Joe is a sad sack who has realized he did not become the successful person he dreamed of being when he was twenty. He blames his marriage for his stagnation. Rogen plays this defense mechanism perfectly, hiding Joe’s vulnerability behind sarcastic dismissals.
Edward Norton provides the perfect foil. Hawk is a man completely comfortable in his skin, and Norton plays him with an aggressive, relaxed confidence that drives Rogen’s character insane. The back-and-forth banter between the two men feels dangerous. It is like watching a tennis match where someone is playing with a live grenade.
Penélope Cruz is equally captivating as Pína. She walks a fine line between an ethereal muse and a calculating disruptor. She is the cat playing with a pair of wounded canaries. In a standout scene, Pína tries to force Joe out of his defensive funk by dancing with him to Sade's classic song By Your Side. The sequence is a brilliant collision of cringe comedy and raw emotional sadness.
Wilde gives herself the toughest role as Angela. Her character is constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown, desperately trying to appear civilized while starving for genuine romantic affection. Angela eventually brings up her experiences with perimenopause and her feelings of being invisible. It is a raw, necessary moment that grounds the wilder sex-comedy elements in real-world truth.
The Third Act Problem That Stops a Masterpiece
For all its sharp wit and formal control, The Invite does stumble as it approaches the finish line. The film sets up a massive narrative bomb with the swinger proposition. The audience spends an hour wondering if these characters will actually go through with it.
When the movie needs to cash those narrative checks, the screenplay blinks. It backs away from its most radical, kink-charged ideas to chase something more conventional. The frantic comedic energy slows down drastically in the final twenty minutes. It trades the fast-paced verbal sparring for long, stilted confessions.
The transition into heavy existential dread feels earned for Joe and Angela, but the way the script handles the departure of Hawk and Pína feels abrupt. The upstairs couple essentially serves as emotional ghosts, arriving to shake up the status quo and then vanishing before they have to deal with any real consequences.
The final scenes leave the central marriage hanging in a bittersweet, open-ended stalemate. It is a realistic portrayal of romantic disillusionment, but viewers looking for a clean resolution or a massive comedic payoff might find the ending a bit of a letdown.
Real Takeaways Before You See the Movie
Do not go into this expecting a lighthearted date-night movie. The Invite is a deeply cynical look at long-term commitment that will likely spark some uncomfortable conversations on the car ride home.
If you plan on watching it, keep these practical points in mind:
- Watch the original first if you like comparisons. Cesc Gay’s Sentimental is much more grounded and mundane. Comparing the two shows how much American cultural anxieties around therapy and sex influenced Wilde's remake.
- Pay attention to the background details. The set design of the San Francisco apartment tells you everything you need to know about Joe and Angela’s emotional distance before they even speak a word.
- Prepare for a tonal shift. The first hour is a laugh-out-loud comedy of manners. The final act is a somber character study. Adjust your expectations accordingly.
The Invite proves that Wilde has serious longevity as a director. It avoids the easy, crowd-pleasing tropes of modern studio comedies to deliver a harsh, funny, and beautifully shot portrait of middle-age panic. It is well worth the discomfort.
