The Invite: Movie Review

Cast: Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penelope Cruz, Edward Norton
Director: Olivia Wilde

In a parallel to The Drama movie with Zendaya and Robert Pattinson earlier this year, The Invite's tale of a dinner party going awry once again lays bare the cracks in a relationship that has weathered many storms and somehow withered.

Rogen is Joe, a former musician who inherited his parents' New York apartment and works as a music teacher while his wife Angela (Wilde, also on directing duties) stays indoors all day. After another soul-destroying day, Joe comes home to be told by his wife the neighbours from upstairs, Pina and Hawk (Cruz and Norton) will be heading round for dinner shortly.

To say more about The Invite from this point on is to rob writer Rashida Jones and Will McCormack's story of some of its edges - even if it's obvious where it's going. 

There's a duality at play throughout the clearly-written-for-the-stage movie; Joe's unhappy at the continual noises of their neighbours' vociferous love-making, ("They're fucking like monsters," he bemoans) but seems almost curious and repulsed by what he discovers from them. And Angela's thrilled by the interest the soft-spoken Hawk shows in her renovations, as well as her.

There's a sharpness to the script and although a few moments don't quite hang together because a lot of the characterisation is done by broad strokes (a smash cut to Joe sitting unhappily after a montage of seeming happiness, Angela's attempts at ingratiating herself), most of The Invite lands with a horrifying universality of couples in their lives.

While there are some genuinely laugh-out-loud funny moments thanks to Rogen's Joe's reactions to various situations, there's an undercurrent of sadness running through this remake of the 2020 Spanish film, The People Upstairs.

Whether it's the bickering that begins the film that has a thinly veiled layer of nastiness to the barbs traded between Joe and Angela, or Joe's bad-mouthing of his wife to Pina in a secluded room, the unhappiness just seems to seep under the surface of this, pushing the marriage to the brink and begging you to watch a relationship crumble under years of not communicating.

How that impacts the audience will largely depend on where you are in your own life, but with Cruz, Rogen, Wilde and Norton delivering quality performances throughout, this really is one invite you can't afford to turn down.