'The Invite' over-promises and under-delivers
At last, a lightly comic yet acid-tongued drama about marital discord!
Why these stories are common is clearer than why certain ones rise to the top. Last year Bradley Cooper’s “Is This Thing On?” brought an unpredictable, bent filmmaking style to a story about mid-life recalibration and wound up with something that richly explored relationship intangibles over time … and got blanked during awards season and year-end conversations. More than a decade ago, Seth Rogen co-starred in a searing exploration of long-term dynamics and novelty, and if there are a lot of non-critics out there who have discovered and fittingly love “Take This Waltz” I haven’t met them.
Yet “The Invite” has been a critical and commercial hit in 2026 as if it were some miraculous, word-of-mouth-driven combination of “Blue Valentine” and “A Good Old Fashioned Orgy,” which it isn’t. It gives nothing away to say that Angela (Olivia Wilde, directing and over-acting) and Joe (Rogen) aren’t doing well as a pair, and that they’re having their upstairs neighbors Hawk (Edward Norton) and Pina (Penelope Cruz) over less as shared harmony than a not-entirely-unconscious lunge for happiness to rub off. Because while Angela and Joe have been mildly embarrassed at the noise caused by their extended apartment remodeling, they’ve been far more appalled at the unmissable sounds of, well, late-night euphoria coming from above at all hours. Think of that scene in “High Fidelity” of Rob and Laura laughing about what they overhear, and then picture them not laughing.
The idea of a tense chamber piece in which commanding actors play off each other like jazz and break down inhibitions and disappointments sounds tremendous. Perhaps the inspiration here, Cesc Gay’s 2020 film “The People Upstairs” that apparently has already been remade multiple times in multiple languages, really achieves intellectual and romantic transcendence.
In the hands of writers Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, however, “The Invite” has even less wisdom than their “Celeste and Jesse Forever” about the reasons good things go bad or the seemingly extreme measures some take to turn anguish into joy. Meanwhile, along with failing to notice how badly her cast out-performs her, Wilde as a director also fails to match her rhythms to her hilly San Francisco setting in the short- or long-term, leaning too heavily on the booming cello in Devonte Hynes’ score. The jokes are often smothered, and the narrative seems misguided about what is actually tame, predictable, and less than illuminating about real and imagined boundaries — and what it really looks like when you go to the other side.
Does the film allow us to move through the fog of discontent into real understanding about what survives underneath? No. Does it create unforgettable moments or dramatic or comedic highlights you can’t wait to tell others about? No. Then why has “The Invite” been one of the more talked-about films of the year? Maybe because it is somewhat button-pushing yet also safe, identifying something risky and also avoiding it, cheekily acknowledging a topic that might get brought up as a joke and then running out the door before anyone gets too uncomfortable. This is a digestible movie with some ideas on its mind and fewer that it indulges, and the impact is only more dissatisfaction and need for stronger communication.
That lands “The Invite” below the great “Booksmart” and maybe even a fraction below the shaky but more discussion-worthy “Don’t Worry Darling” on the list of Wilde directorial efforts, in a land of cinematic mediocrity that’s already far too full.
C
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