Lisa Johnson Mandell’s The Invite review predicts Olivia Wilde’s small film with a four person cast will garner big laughs and bigger accolades.

Although The Invite is the ultimate couples clash—an intimate evisceration of two very different marriages, I’d advise you not to see it with your romantic partner, but a good natured friend. Otherwise, you and your partner could well be sitting there wondering why the other is laughing so hard, and if he/she is being reminded of you or your relationship.

I saw it with a vivacious girlfriend and we laughed so hard we cried and got stomach pains. It was a perfect girls night out. It’s the type of sophisticated, grown-up sex comedy for anyone who has ever made a mess of a relationship, which likely includes all adults.

The setup is not complicated — you can get most of it from the trailer: married couple Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Olivia Wilde, pulling double duty as director and star) are stuck in a rut of bickering domesticity. Neither one of them is comfortable with their lives inside or outside their marriage.

But when Angela impulsively invites their upstairs neighbors — the maddeningly sexy, maddeningly open Hawk (Edward Norton) and Piña (Penélope Cruz) — over for dinner, you have one apartment, four people, and an infinite amount of frustration and resentment peppered with spiciest of offers and revelations revealed with unfathomably bad timing.

The Invite review — A Wilde ride

Now Wilde has had her share of messy and public relationship foibles, and in case you’re wondering if the script was taken from her own experiences, it’s not. The Invite is the American remake of Cesc Gay’s 2020 Spanish film The People Upstairs (itself adapted from his stage play), which has already been remade in France, Italy, Switzerland, and South Korea.

Interestingly, she was not the first person to see the merits of an American adaptation. The English-language remake had been kicking around since 2021, with Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris attached and Amy Adams, Paul Rudd and Tessa Thompson cast in the leads.

That version stalled, and it wasn’t until 2025 that Wilde came aboard with her own cast, and it was certainly worth the wait. I’m adding all four of them to my likely Oscar nominee list.

Their chemistry is sublime. Rogen’s schlubby deadpan, Norton’s specialty in charming blowhards, Cruz’s regal chill, and Wilde’s brittle, overextended Angela come together styles find a shared rhythm, the way a good jazz quartet does. At times discordant, at others wild and surprising, but it always finds its way back to a mesmerizing vibe.

While screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will McCormack delivered a razor sharp script, the writing was a bit of a collaboration of everyone involved, because the it was fine-tuned during a two-week actors’ workshop where Jones, McCormack, Wilde, Rogen, Cruz, and Norton improvised scenes and dialogue, much of their work showing up on the screen.

The score provides an exquisite backbeat. Dev Hynes wrote the music, and it does exactly what this talky script needs: it stays out of the way until it doesn’t, needling in when a scene requires an extra beat of unease or tenderness.

Wilde’s directing career has had its arguable ups and downs. She made a strong and funny but relatively quiet debut with Booksmart in 2019, followed by the much-scrutinized stumble of Don’t Worry Darling in 2022, a film that generated more headlines about its behind the scenes controversy than its content. The Invite is the correction — tighter, funnier, and more confident than either predecessors.

I’m thinking this is the film that finally gets Wilde talked about in the awards-season conversation rather than in tabloid titters. It’s done well on the festival circuit, landing a standing ovation at Sundance, which is rare. Mark my words, The Invite will be a sleeper hit.

Rated R

1 Hour 47 Minutes

If this The Invite review encourages you to grab a bestie and saunter over to the cineplex, get times and tickets on Fandango.com.

Lisa Johnson Mandell’s The Invite review predicts Olivia Wilde’s small film with a four person cast will garner big laughs and bigger accolades.