The Invite Review

A Dinner Party Turns Into Hilariously Deranged Relationship Warfare

By: Marc Kozak

The Invite

A Dinner Party Turns Into Hilariously Deranged Relationship Warfare

By: Marc Kozak

The concept behind Olivia Wilde's The Invite is very simple: a struggling married couple invites their upstairs neighbors, a seemingly happier married couple, over for a dinner party. There are essentially only four people on the screen during its 107-minute runtime, and all of the drama unfolds during one long conversation held within the confines of a single apartment setting. It's not surprising that this kind of uncomplicated story originated as a stage production (2015's "Los Vecinos de Arriba" by Spanish director Cesc Gay) — what's more surprising is that there have already been six film adaptations in various languages in little more than 10 years (including Gay's own Spanish-language version, 2020's The People Upstairs).

There are plenty of good reasons this particular story has garnered interest in multiple cultures. For one, it gets at many of the difficulties and anxieties around the modern marriage. Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Wilde, pulling double duty) are the prototypical present-day married couple, a once-passionate relationship burdened by money troubles and the difficulties of parenthood, made even more difficult by years of uncommunicated desires, perceived personal failures, and a steady increase in resentment. The couple begin to argue the moment Joe walks in the door — Joe failed to bring home wine for the dinner party he didn't even know about — and they don't stop bickering until (or even after) the guests arrive.

The sharp script, written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, perfectly walks a tonal tightrope between bitter seriousness and devilishly cutting humor, providing enough big laughs to offset the reality that this is a marriage in big trouble. Rogen does a lot of heavy lifting in the opening scene, effortlessly inhabiting a wisecracking asshole that constantly picks at his wife with a litany of incredulous (and often very funny) complaints. Wilde is equally compelling as a high-strung, frazzled housewife who darts back and forth across the frame, berating her husband for his lack of effort, barely holding back her contempt and disgust while still trying to keep things together enough to get through a dinner party. The duo has great comedic chemistry and timing, channeling a sort of manic "I Love Lucy" energy that feels timelessly relatable.

" It's exactly the kind of intelligent adult comedy that we always seem to be crying out for. "

Enter the upstairs couple, Pína (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), a pair that glides around with cool confidence and crackling sexual energy. Joe and Angela don't really know them at all outside of a few casual run-ins, but they do know that they must have a robust social and sex life, mostly because they constantly hear it through the building's thin walls. Pína and Hawk are objects of both fear and desire to Joe and Angela — they seem like a couple who still exist in a state of harmony and romance, going on cool adventures and having ceiling-shaking orgasms. The insecure Joe tries to paint them as a bunch of sex weirdos, even though Angela clearly wants what they have and is desperate to impress them, going so far as to make a wild attempt at cooking a Spanish dish made with jamón to win over Pína.

The nervous Joe and Angela continue to openly snipe at each other in front of the coolly bemused Hawk and Pína, but things eventually settle down and we start to learn a bit about the mysterious couple. Pína is a psychotherapist and sexologist, while Hawk is a retired firefighter with a passion for antique rugs. Norton and Cruz are clearly having a great time with the characters, hands all over each other, moving and speaking like they are some kind of New Age gurus. It's a particularly perfect role for Norton, who exaggerates his own natural smirking certitude to incredible comedic effect.

It very quickly begins to feel like Hawk and Pína are observing and evaluating Joe and Angela for a very specific reason (which you can probably guess by now), and once that reason is finally out in the open, things really start to escalate. Pína goes off with Joe to a different room to smoke a joint, flattering him and flirting with him while he can only giggle nervously and stare with open-mouthed desire. Hawk goes on an apartment tour with Angela, praising her creative spirit while slowly getting closer and closer to her, much to Angela's anxious delight. It seems like their neighbors are the exact kind of partners they want and the opposite of the kind of partner they currently have.

Eventually, everything is out on the table and Joe and Angela must make a choice. Sure, their marriage is in a rough place, but is it beyond repair? Once some ugly truths are finally spoken, will that bring them closer together or break them completely? Sure, there is physical attraction between them and their upstairs neighbors, but are they a couple worth looking up to or just another broken couple with their own weird stuff they're dealing with?

The premise of The Invite works so well because almost any married couple can see bits and pieces of themselves somewhere in the story. We all want to be seen and desired, we all want to seem young and exciting and open-minded. It's easy to look at another couple and see greener grass on the other side of the fence, but is jumping over the fence for a night really going to bring about change or happiness? The movie covers a lot of ground in the course of one dinner party, and is graciously entertaining and humane while deftly exploring some difficult truths about monogamous relationships and the amount of work that needs to go into a successful long-lasting marriage.

All four actors are putting in great work and play wonderfully off each other. It's easy to criticize Seth Rogen as a one-note actor who is basically always playing himself, but he sneakily steals the show here as a wounded man who lashes out with jokes and deflection instead of confronting the things he needs to change about himself, the kind of guy who might be all too familiar in our own lives (or our own mirror). As natural as Norton's role is, so too is Penélope Cruz's Pína, who inherently projects a level of sensuality that affects everyone in the room while also being the most secure in herself and her own philosophy on relationships (score one for the benefits of therapy).

Despite the single location, the movie looks great and is shot with care and precision (on 35mm, no less) by cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, who won an Emmy on another Seth Rogen project, The Studio. The controlled pacing is helped immensely by Yorgos Lanthimos' longtime editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis, while Devonté Hynes' jazzy score provides the final sheen to a very confident and good-looking package. It's a significant leap forward for Wilde as a filmmaker, whose previous work — the energetic debut comedy Booksmart and the messy sci-fi thriller Don't Worry Darling — hinted at this kind of ability, which is wonderfully realized here in her best movie to date. It's a whip-smart relationship comedy that carries enough bite and truth to stand the test of time, elegantly simple and yet thematically complex, sure to spark an interesting conversation on the car ride home. It's exactly the kind of intelligent adult comedy that we always seem to be crying out for; I can only hope it finds the audience it deserves.

Originally published on: May 8, 2026 as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival.