#333: The Invite
Release Date: June 26th, 2026
Format: Cinemark Baldwin Hills Crenshaw and XD
Written by: Rashida Jones and Will McCormack
Directed by: Olivia Wilde
3.5 Stars
The Invite is about a yuppy San Francisco couple, Angela (Olivia Wilde) and Joe (Seth Rogen), hosting their slightly older and slightly more attractive upstairs neighbors, Pina (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), for a dinner party.
Angela wants to show off their tastefully appointed, newly renovated condo - a Pinterest dream board monstrosity of high-end rugs and carefully curated antique furniture. Joe wants her to postpone the dinner altogether; his back hurts from the ride home from work on his fold-up bicycle, an Angela purchase because it better fits the condo’s aesthetic (Joe hates the thing).
Unwilling to budge, and already committed to a souffle that’s in the oven, Angela begs Joe to please just be hospitable for the evening. Joe responds with a threat: If she goes through with this dinner party, he’s going to bring up the fact that they can hear Pina loudly orgasm every night through their bedroom walls.
Angela is horrified, and then knock knock, Pina and Hawk are here.
The Invite’s script, from actress Rashida Jones and Will McCormack in their feature-film screenwriting debuts, unfolds deliciously despite the story’s confinement to a single setting and just these four characters.
The dinner goes off the rails almost immediately, but where to next? Jones and McCormack’s dialogue-driven story gives us plenty of other things to chew on: fidelity, attraction, anger, grief, honesty, and acceptance. I thought the film’s ending got a little cute, trying to put a bright symbolic red bow on what’s otherwise a nuanced examination of relationships, but this is still a great script.
Director Olivia Wilde does an admirable job managing the film’s similarly nuanced tones as well. The Invite is consistently funny, but Wilde never sells out the script’s soul for easy laughs. She and her performers (who are all excellent and well-cast) keep us curious until the very end. This is funny, we keep telling ourselves…but maybe it won’t be for long. The Invite gives us emotions that are delicate and balanced on an edge, like these characters’ quickly evolving relationships.
Postscript: Occasionally my efforts to avoid pre-existing writing and criticism about a film backfire on me. I wasn’t aware that Rashida Jones and Will McCormack adapted their screenplay from Spanish filmmaker Cesc Gay’s film, The People Upstairs. I was wholly impressed when I thought their screenplay was original, and now that I know it’s an adaptation, I’m just sort of impressed.
