The Invite

by Julian Spivey

Photo: A24

Director: Olivia Wilde
Starring: Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz & Edward Norton
Rated: R (sexual material, language & drug use)
Runtime: 1 hour & 47 minutes

 
Olivia Wilde’s latest directorial effort, “The Invite,” is one of those movies where you need to decide before purchasing your ticket whether you’re looking for entertainment or realism and art. If you just want something fun, you’ll probably want to look elsewhere.

​“The Invite,” co-written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones and based on the 2020 Spanish film “Sentimental,” is about learning when to realize a long-term relationship has come to an end, and it does so through brutal bouts of marital bickering that are incredibly true to life.

“The Invite” is billed as a comedy, and it is funny. Seth Rogen, who plays the depressed, failed musician husband, has hysterical line readings and reactions to situations both typical and atypical, and Wilde, who plays the beleaguered wife, has a multitude of facial expressions that will both make you laugh and knock you off your feet with how terrifically expressive she is as an actress. And, when – maybe halfway to two-thirds of the way through the film – you find out exactly what their upstairs neighbors, played by Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton, are up to, it ups the humor ante even more.

But at the heart of the film is something incredibly unfunny: the remnants of a dead relationship and the process of coming to terms with it. Wilde and Rogen will crush you with their performances of characters we’ve likely seen or experienced in life before. The fights come early and often in the film and go on longer than you’d expect from a comedic film – yes, there are zingers involved, but you might wind up feeling more uncomfortable than amused as a viewer.

Norton and Cruz are terrifically cast as the supporting characters, the upstairs neighbors who have driven Joe crazy with their loud lovemaking. Norton’s Hawk is openly bemused by Joe’s truthfulness about the couple being in his home and plays it in a sly manner Norton is so good at, while Cruz, a sexologist by trade, is sexy and tempting in a way that is almost expected of a character played by her. One of the film’s best scenes comes from Norton explaining how he got the name Hawk, reportedly written by Norton himself, and Rogen’s reportedly ad-libbed response to it.

I’ve always been mesmerized by one-room stories – a film or TV episode that can hold its entire story within one setting. With the exception of the first scene, which shows Rogen’s Joe leaving his music teaching job, the film is told entirely within the couple’s apartment. One-room settings can make a story feel claustrophobic, and what can be more claustrophobic than a couple trapped in a dead relationship, and being the proverbial fly on the wall watching it unravel?

“The Invite” will keep you on the edge of your seat, even if, at times, it makes you so uncomfortable with the constant fights that you want to jump off.