‘The Invite’ Review: Olivia Wilde Turns A Dinner Party Into A Sharp, Chaotic Comedy Of Intimacy

LOS ANGELES, CA — Olivia Wilde’s “The Invite” simmers in the collision of longing, resentment, candor and desire, ricocheting between brittle humor and flare-ups as one evening unravels. Anchored by Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton — two couples whose energies clash — the film becomes a devastating chamber piece, a portrait of intimacy and intrusion where jokes turn confessional and boundaries dissolve.

In her multi-hyphenated career, Wilde has long been circling relationship dynamics — the roles people settle into and the strain of maintaining a partnership that no longer fits. Her films probe that tension and its psychological cost. In “The Invite,” she funnels it into an impromptu dinner that grows increasingly fraught, trading the buoyant social choreography of “Booksmart” and the heightened world-building of “Don’t Worry Darling” for a confined setting where projected selves have nowhere left to hide, and the truth has nowhere left to go. The result is a dinner party that is as emotionally revealing as it is riotously funny, a tightly wound evening that finds its rhythm in the chaos it unleashes.

“The Invite” unfolds in Joe and Angela’s San Francisco apartment, where every small grievance becomes a spark in the couple’s fraying marriage. Rogen plays Joe with a weary, irritable edge that curdles into hostility the moment he feels cornered. Wilde leans into Angela’s anxious brightness as she tries to shift the energy. He’s barely through the door when he discovers she’s invited their upstairs neighbors, Piña (Cruz) and Hawk (Norton), for a spontaneous get-together — an impulsive, well-intentioned gesture that heightens the tension, given the apartment is vibrating with unease when they arrive.

Piña and Hawk sense the tension immediately. Norton plays Hawk with amused fearlessness, greeting the contentious environment with the kind of ease you’d expect from a firefighter who’s seen his share of chaos. Cruz’s Piña radiates composed warmth — the centered calm of a psychotherapist and sexologist who’s spent her career talking people through their storms. Together, they exude a harmony that’s both irresistible and unsettling, rendering Angela starry-eyed with a yearning she’d rather not voice.

What begins as polite small talk quickly becomes a pressure cooker of quips, passive-aggressive jokes and marital jabs. Joe’s irritation — especially about the neighbors’ loud sex — keeps bubbling up, surfacing in comments that make the room flinch. Even Angela’s carefully prepared soufflé burns, a domestic failure Wilde plays with brittle vulnerability: a moment of exasperation softened by her lingering hope that the evening might still right itself.

As wine loosens the conversation, Hawk becomes the evening’s catalyst, his calm provocations nudging the couple toward truths they’ve been avoiding. Joe, a complacent music teacher, bristles at the neighbors’ suggestion of a foursome. It becomes the night’s most destabilizing moment — not for its shock value, but for the way it exposes desire, resentment and the stories he and Angela, an unmoored stay-at-home wife, have been clinging to. Wilde lets the reactions play out in micro-expressions: Joe’s jaw setting, Angela’s flicker of curiosity, Hawk’s overtures, Piña’s assurance.

The evening’s escalating absurdity owes just as much to the script by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, which balances provocation, emotional candor and farce with a deceptively light touch. Their dialogue has a rhythmic snap — quick and revealing — weaving in perimenopause asides and Sade obsessions without feeling contrived. It’s revelatory, exposing the carefully calibrated selves each character presents to the room.

For all its pleasures, the film isn’t without minor stumbles. Wilde’s direction, so often sharp and intuitive, occasionally presses harder than the moment requires, nudging scenes toward a heightened register when the actors are already carrying the emotional nuance with greater subtlety. The tone wobbles in places — a brief over-insistence on farce here, an overstated emotional beat there — small fluctuations in a chamber comedy-drama that otherwise thrives on precision.

Even so, the film’s spell remains intact. Wilde orchestrates the evening with a confidence that grows scene by scene, letting the performances ricochet off one another until the room feels charged with comic danger. Jones and McCormack’s writing gives her the scaffolding, but it’s Wilde’s instinct for timing — the slow burns, the sudden detonations, the way a glance can shift the entire temperature — that carries “The Invite” to its most satisfying peaks.

All of which sets the stage for the film’s deeper point. It widens into an observation about the cultural pressure to be open, impressive, desirable and authentic at once — a comedy of manners that jolts us out of complacency and reminds us how easily the rituals of coupledom can calcify into performance.