The many inflections of relationships and marriage have been touched on countless times in movies; the heartbreaking sorrow of Marriage Story, the beautiful connections and sad, drifting nature of love captured within the Before trilogy, and the exploration of romance has seen numerous depictions in cinema. It’s clear that Olivia Wilde firmly understands this within her third feature film, The Invite, but what’s most impressive about the film is how Wilde’s strongest directorial effort is perfectly matched with the screenplay’s never-ending wit.
Adapted as a remake of the 2020 Spanish film The People Upstairs, The Invite acts as a sharp chamber piece dramedy that utilizes only four performances but is able to get insane mileage from each actor’s capabilities both dramatically and comedically. The jokes fly by so fast that it’s remarkable just how much each one lands to the point of leaving you in stitches. Rashida Jones and Will McCormack’s screenplay also manages to shine a certain poignancy to its dissection of modern relationships, matching its exquisite awkward and situational comedy with genuine insight into the reasons for falling in or out of love and why we tend to project our own sadness onto each other. Simply put, if you’re looking for never-ending laughs, The Invite delivers in both directions, and its spark-fueled screenplay makes for one of the best films of the year.
Credit: Courtesy of A24
After opening on a fuzzy flashback to happier times and a brutally foreboding Oscar Wilde quote stating, “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.” We open with Joe (Seth Rogen), a misery-ridden music teacher who sees his job of teaching students as another reminder of how far he’s fallen from his life’s ambitions. As he rides home on his hard-to-pedal foldable bike, the film’s opening is intercut with Joe’s wife, Angela (Olivia Wilde), preparing their apartment for the arrival of their upstairs neighbors for a dinner party.
Once Joe gets home and complains about his aching back, the couple starts bickering over their incoming guest, with Joe insisting that Angela never told him that they were having guests. The two continue to fight about things, from not eating the prepared cheese to Joe forgetting to buy wine for the party. Their guests, Piña (Penélope Cruz), a psychologist, and Hawk (Edward Norton), a former firefighter, finally arrive to interrupt Joe and Angela’s fighting, in which Joe is insisting on telling their neighbors to please keep down their extremely loud lovemaking they can hear constantly from their apartment at night. As the night unfolds and things go wrong in the most awkward ways possible, the two couples go into conversations with each other that they would’ve never imagined.
Credit: Courtesy of A24
Probably the most striking aspect of The Invite is how smoothly each quip and extended sequence of dialogue is delivered by the actors in the screenplay, but its strong characterization from its opening moments is the building block of all its comedy. We know from the start that Joe and Angela’s relationship hasn’t had a true spark for a while now, but we learn everything we need to know about each of our four characters through the lightest of touches to the word play. Joe’s nonchalant energy and consistent sarcasm and cynicism portrayed as an evolution to Rogen’s comedic and dramatic strengths as an actor, Wilde perfectly capturing the people pleasing anxieties surrounding Angela, and Piña (always the smartest in the room) and Hawk (charming to the point of annoying Joe) acting as essentially the inverse of the two of them at first glance, a dream couple that is a straight point to the sadness of Joe and Anglea’s current relationship.
Nearly every joke lands in the film, from more elongated bits to the quickest exchange that leaves an audience laughing so hard it’s almost hard to hear the next joke as the craziness of the narrative continues to unfold. The quick-witted nature of the screenplay, however, would grow a bit tiresome without the technical elements being as sharp as the conversational-based chamber piece, and Wilde delivers both on and off camera. Wilde’s previous directing efforts, Booksmart and Don’t Worry Darling, ranged from pretty solid to subpar, respectively, but The Invite is pretty handily her at her most confident behind the camera.
Credit: Courtesy of A24
She makes such great use of the apartment space in both the blocking of each actor and the placement of each shot, whether it’s conversations between all four of them or just two of them whenever they separate, there’s intent to each way the camera is framed to capture each expression, or how it pans so cleanly throughout the space as the film goes on. The sharp direction perfectly matches every crackle and pop the screenplay derives, and the addition of Devonté Hynes’ string-based score adds to the percolating chaos of every moment.
The film mainly rides a clever joke-a-minute tone throughout, until it delivers a shocking amount of appreciated honesty about the central marriage crumbling in the middle of it. The movie’s third act veers in an almost completely different direction tonally, diving into a raw conversation about the sense of happiness disappearing within Joe and Angela’s relationship, reflecting on the idea of whether keeping a broken marriage afloat is worth it despite wallowing in resentment for each other and naively thinking it’s for the better for your children if you stay together. The Invite caps its near 90 minutes of uneasy hilarity and harsh truths with a somber and sweet ending that ties everything together, through essentially a therapy session, and it works wonders for the film, providing genuine insight into the uncomfortable topics it revels in.
The Invite is just a supremely great time through and through, never losing the edge of its witty comedy in the large or precise direction on the screen while providing a genuine conversation on the topic of relationships that will leave you emotional by the time the credits roll. Olivia Wilde never loses the grip of this consistently fresh chamber piece, leading to what will be one of the best and funniest films of the entire year.
The Invite will debut exclusively in select theaters on June 26, 2026, courtesy of A24. The film will expand nationwide on July 10th.
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The Invite is just a supremely great time through and through, never losing the edge of its witty comedy in the large or precise direction on the screen while providing a genuine conversation on the topic of relationships that will leave you emotional by the time the credits roll.
Lover of film writing about film. Member of the Dallas Fort-Worth Critics Association. The more time passes, the more the medium of movies has become deeply intertwined with who I am.
