If 2026 has taught us anything about the modern cinematic landscape (besides TikTok videos and Nolan’s Odyssey ruling), it’s that audiences are hungry for high-wire adult comedies that don’t pull their punches. Directed with vibrant, unflinching confidence by Olivia Wilde, The Invite arrives as the definitive comedy of the year so far – a film that trades broad, telegraphed slapstick for biting honesty, razor-sharp intelligence, and an underlying well of marital wisdom.
Adapted by longtime writing collaborators Rashida Jones and Will McCormack from Spanish director Cesc Gay’s acclaimed hit Sentimental, the film takes a razor-thin premise and explodes it into a psychological pressure cooker. Gay’s original DNA – steeped in Barcelona sensibilities and an obsession with the fragile mechanics of human connection – is fully intact here, but Wilde turns the material into a glossy, claustrophobic, and wildly funny look at what happens when long-term relationships rot from the inside out.
The setup is deceptively simple: set almost entirely within a single apartment in San Francisco, we meet Angela (Olivia Wilde) and Joe (Seth Rogen), a middle-aged couple whose marriage has hit a glacial patch. Before the (somewhat unwanted) guests even arrive, their relationship is already fracturing across a minefield of petty domestic grievances. They spar in bitter rows over everything: a folding bicycle parked in the middle of the living room, shoes left past the doorstep, unread text messages about wine, and who dropped the ball on their 12-year-old daughter Maggie.
Angela has spent her entire day obsessively prepping for a quiet dinner with their enigmatic upstairs neighbors, Piña (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton is the “Birdman” here). She’s even whipped up a soufflé – which, in a tragic bit of foreshadowing for the evening, overcooks and lands squarely in the trash can. When Piña and Hawk finally arrive, the contrast couldn’t be starker. Joe and Angela spend their nights listening through the ceiling to their neighbors’ booming, ecstatic orgasms – an auditory intrusion that annoys Joe but sparks something dormant in Angela. Piña is a charismatic sexologist and psychotherapist, and Hawk is her balanced, attentive, and equally charismatic partner. Together, they enjoy a passionate and (very) open romantic dynamic that forces Angela and Joe to confront pretty much everything in their own lives, from their self-worth to their romantic decay and body image issues.
What makes The Invite so visually engaging – despite its strict locational limitations – is how meticulously Wilde and her Emmy-winning Director of Photography, Adam Newport-Berra (Euphoria, The Bear, The Studio), constructed the environment. Scouted from dozens of real San Francisco apartments to pull the best architectural quirks of the city, the setting was ultimately built from the ground up on an LA soundstage.
During a recent Sundance Collab session featuring Wilde and Newport-Berra, the duo broke down the staggering amount of prep that went into transforming a single interior into a living, breathing character. Because the film was shot sequentially on gorgeous 35mm film – a choice Newport-Berra pushed for to give human skin tones depth and to “rough up” the synthetic nature of a soundstage – every visual element had to be curated with surgical precision. The custom wall paints were chosen to capture warm, rich tones without feeling sterile, and character wardrobe was color-coordinated to blend or clash with the walls depending on their emotional state. Penélope Cruz even turned blonde specifically for the role of Piña, visually separating her from the darker, warmer tones of Angela and matching more with the vibe of the visual references the filmmakers had.
Rather than relying on a rigid, pre-planned shot list, Newport-Berra sat in rehearsals taking frantic notes as the actors blocked out scenes. This organic approach allowed the camera to play dynamically with lens focal lengths. Long lenses were used to create immense physical and emotional distance between Joe and Angela even within tight quarters. Strategic use of doorframes physically split the frame to divide the distant couple, while reflections and mirrors continuously pushed the limits of the single space. (Thankfully, none of the latter was overutilized.)
When you trap four world-class actors in a room, the mechanics of director-as-actor can get tricky. Yet Wilde noted during the Sundance session that pulling double duty in front of and behind the camera was effortless here, largely due to the oiled machinery of her crew and the sheer caliber of her cast.
The performances are an absolute masterclass in active listening, straight out of a Meisner textbook. Seth Rogen surprises with dramatic weight, delivering his finest work in the still, quiet moments of heartbreak as a man watching his life slip through his fingers. Olivia Wilde plays the neuroses of suburban dissatisfaction with electric energy, matching Rogen blow-for-blow in early domestic spats. Penélope Cruz brings a magnetic, radiant subtlety to Piña, balancing sex therapy wisdom with genuine warmth. Meanwhile, Edward Norton steals the show with quirky, unhinged genius. Norton delivers a soaring, highly memorable monologue toward the climax (no pun intended) – which he came up with – explaining the origins of his character’s name, “Hawk.” And in one instant classic moment during a hyper-tense scene, Norton pops up in the background with a tray of tea, offering rooibos that gets sharply declined. UNEXPECTED. HILARIOUS. HYPER-CREATIVE.
Naturally, the film isn’t entirely without its flaws. The first 15 minutes struggle to find a clean rhythm. Devonté Hynes provides a score that leans heavily into dynamic Spanish motifs right out of the gate, attempting to telegraph a sense of heightened, frantic energy onto what should simply be a quiet, bitter, everyday domestic row. So the music, unfortunately, ends up being super distracting.
Early on, the camera relies a bit too heavily on repetitive mirror gimmicks before Wilde settles into her groove, letting the actors carry the room. Furthermore, cinephiles aware of Cesc Gay’s original Sentimental might feel a slight sting of remake fatigue. In an era where original human scripts need all the support they can get over studio remakes and AI-written material, one wishes this brilliant team had built an original story from scratch.
However, once the front door opens and the four characters sit down for drinks, the movie fires on all cylinders. Dedicated affectionately to Diane Keaton – whose complexity, vulnerability, and spirit Wilde cited as her primary inspiration – The Invite ultimately poses heavy, lingering questions: Is it better for a child to grow up under the roof of two miserable parents clinging to a dead marriage, or with two single, balanced individuals who have reclaimed their self-worth? It asks how we maintain desire after decades together, how professional failures contaminate romantic spaces, and why we so often forget that we have two ears and only one mouth (so we can listen more, instead of only speaking).
It’s an edge-of-your-seat, intelligent, deeply feminine-gaze comedy that will leave theater rows – especially groups of women and brave couples – roaring with laughter and debating their own relationship dynamics long after the lights come up.
You can catch The Invite at your nearest movie theater or rent it on Prime Video.
~ by Dora Endre ~
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