Joe (Seth Rogen) returns home from work to the apartment where his wife, Angela (Olivia Wilde), asks him if he brought the wine for the dinner they are hosting that night for their neighbors, Hawk (Edward Norton) and Piña (Penélope Cruz). The first that Joe is apparently hearing of this dinner, he came home empty-handed, sparking an argument that must quickly be tabled when the doorbell rings. The guests have arrived.

Olivia Wilde directs The Invite from a script penned by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, themselves adapting Sentimental (2020) by Cesc Gay. In addition to Gay’s native Spain, the property has since been adapted and released in France, Italy, Switzerland, and South Korea. The stateside spin on this globally relatable comedy premiered at the 2026 edition of the Sundance Film Festival, where A24 picked up distribution rights for the title and gave it a moderately wide release in the sticky days of summer.

The Invite, having truly originated as a stage play by Gay, retains its live theatre roots in its small cast and single location. McCormack and Jones also fill the script with fiery banter in the tradition of the American Stage that, despite a few one-liners or flashes of technology, could easily see this drama play out in any number of decades prior. Part of this timelessness can be attributed to the more mature cast, whereas many of the comedies in today’s landscape are cast a generation or more younger and meet that audience at home on streaming with all the baggage that invites. Further, cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, opting to shoot on 35mm, gives the images on screen a texture that is both welcomed and rare in today’s age of digital sheen. With Angela framed as an interior decorator – actual set decoration handled by Adam Willis – each room has a unique color or style about it, yet can still be seen as a complete, cohesive unit brought together in manicured chaos. One of the other interesting things about their apartment is that it is two apartments with a wall knocked down between them. The completion of the construction is the whole impetus for this dinner party as an apology for months of construction noise, but as a metaphor for the events of the evening it is literally a home being torn apart, yet with the ambiguous hope that something new will come from it all.

As we learn pretty much from the jump, Joe and Angela are far from the perfect couple. He is rather misanthropic, working an unfulfilling job at the music conservatory and living in pain from a pinched nerve in his back. She spends her time tending to the home, surrounded by her art, which seemingly taunts her by its very existence as it sits on the floor and leans against the walls of the hallways. Joe, himself a former musician, likewise has buried his piano in books and records, swearing off playing its keys since settling down and becoming a father. Meanwhile, Hawk is a firefighter and Piña an acupuncturist, and together they share a very active (read: loud) sex life, the echoes of which also haunt the sexless couple in the apartment below. The dinner party came about as a way for Angela to apologize for months of construction noise, but the neighbors also use it as a sly opportunity to apologize for their carnal noises; an apology which opens up the conversation of engaging in a couple swap of their own. It is at this juncture that The Invite finally hits its stride, with enough pieces narratively in place that we can begin to orient ourselves in the story and that this cast of oddball characters – specifically Rogan’s Joe – can be taken off leash and really lean into the specific brand of comedy which McCormack and Jones have fostered on the page and which Wilde has allowed her cast to foster and let grow spontainously in the moment.

Rogen gets to really lean in to the nastiness of his character, which only helps us sympathize with Wilde’s ambitious, yet wing-clipped Angela. Foils for each other, the confidence that effortlessly wafts off of Cruz’s Piña only makes Angela a more tragic character, effortlessly humiliated in her own home. The odd man out here is Norton’s Hawk, a rug enthusiast who, to be generous to the film, is a man who on paper has everything Joe feels is missing from his life but is also deeply unfulfilled and unhappy. The meaning and the foil is all there on the page, and while Norton delivers a fine performance in the same timbre as his castmates, he is held back by the obtuse way in which Hawk is written. He is ever so slightly ambiguous, not in a way that makes him exceptionally sexy, nor in a way that makes him feel dangerous, either; rather, he seems like one who is putting on a show of confidence in a way that feels almost pathetic. This is eventually proven to be true as the script gives Norton a runway for some monologues that too-young actors will be chomping at the bit to emulate in their own auditions, but it feels like such a total aside from the entire ebb and flow of the narrative and does not blend in as well as it should. Again, that Norton is able to pull this off is a testament to his performance, but Hawk, on the page and on the screen, is a wily character and slips through everyone involved’s hands. A little more focus and direction would have found that missing tiny bit of conviction which would elevate his part in the film and make a very solid relationship dramedy something truly great.

The Invite is, as they say, like watching a train wreck and being unable to look away. The tragedy here, of course, is a marriage in crisis, and at the end, there are a million different ways to filter through the events of the evening, and not a single conclusion would be wrong or unsupported. This is due to the actors’ showcase style of the film, one built on an incredible base of trust forged by the core cast together, where they could tap into any of the more unsavory emotions we feel with the understanding that what we see is both all play and not personal, all the while portraying the very real thoughts that bubble up even in our most secure relationships. In this way, the film is a fascinating examination of a relationship on the precipice of either collapse or, more positively, resolution. What McMormack and Jones are trying to drive home is that relationships are all about choices, larger choices about where to live and work, to thousands of smaller choices that we make without ever realizing yet contribute to the complex foundation of our own relationships. What they, along with Wilde’s cast, achieve across the brief run time is nothing short of extraordinary, and while The Invite shakes off any preconceived notion of what a romantic comedy can deliver, it presents something so deeply felt and lived in, yet broad enough that we can all graft on to the film our own experiences. Coupled with a cast that is somehow so in sync with their own dysfunction, this is a film that can meet audiences wherever they are in their own lives, and will be one where our understanding will only continue to grow and change across each subsequent revisit. Like an optical illusion, The Invite should not work as well as it does, but nevertheless it is wholly satisfying to sit there and ponder its existence.