The Invite (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

The Invite

THE INVITE (2026)

Starring Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton.

Screenplay by Will McCormack & Rashida Jones.

Directed by Olivia Wilde.

Distributed by A24. 107 minutes. Rated R.

We’ve all experienced it – the awkward dinner party. Two couples from the same building, who know each other to nod at, but not much more, decide to get together.

The whole night starts out on the wrong foot because the host couple has been fighting – he doesn’t want to have the neighbors over, she does. They are very different couples – one long married, one in the relative honeymoon phase. One couple is outgoing; the other one is kind of repressed. One couple seems happy. The other one is trying to hide its sadness.

It’s a social and emotional powder keg.

The irony of The Invite is that the supposedly “normal” couple is infinitely more screwed up than the more adventurous one. But even the second couple have their own fissures, and a night with their dysfunctional neighbors brings those to the surface as well.

Director Wilde plays Angela, a San Francisco housewife and mother who is bored with her life. She is in a marriage that is increasingly making her unhappy. Having long ago given up her artistic aspirations for the sake of family life, she has become horribly insecure about herself and her place in the world.

Her husband is Joe (Seth Rogen). Joe is a former aspiring rock star (his band had one minor hit in 2008), who now has a dead-end job teaching music in a local conservatory. He lives in his parents’ old apartment – the only way he could afford it – and he’s pretty miserable in his life. Joe does not want to be there – or rather doesn’t want the guests to be there – and he lets everyone know it with a series of not-so-subtle jibes and rebuffs.

The man in the other couple is Hawk (Edward Norton), a retired firefighter who left the job early after the death of his wife and a near‑fatal injury while fighting a blaze. Now he is trying to open himself up to experiences, learning Rolfing (calling it a "much deeper modality" than standard massage) and throwing himself into a relatively new (about a year) relationship.

While she is the most open and out there of the group, Penélope Cruz’s character Pina is the most grounded and empathetic of the four. She works as a psychotherapist and sexologist and is constantly picking up on spoken and unspoken social cues. It takes a lot to anger her – but when it does happen, she will not hold back what she is feeling.

Almost 15 years ago I interviewed co-writers Rashida Jones and her long-time collaborator Will McCormack about their then-current movie Celeste and Jesse Forever. Jones pointed out something about their writing and real-life sexual roles which still resonated in the storyline of The Invite.

“Men deny and deny and deny and when they finally feel it, it’s too late. They regret it forever. Women have no choice but to process the pain as it’s happening,” Jones explained.

“And move on…,” McCormack added.

It’s a dynamic that plays out quietly but unmistakably between the two couples in The Invite – the men circling their discomfort until it finally corners them, the women navigating theirs in real time, whether they want to or not.

Which is why, when the night’s real agenda finally emerges – that Pina and Hawk are swingers and interested in perhaps experimenting with their new friends – it becomes a hand grenade thrown into the party.

Joe and Angela are intrigued and somewhat turned on by the idea. Hawk is all in, but Pina knows that group sex can only work when all of the members of the group are in happy, trusting, committed relationships. It has to be done for the right reasons – out of joy and exploration, not out of fear, anger or lust. She fears that Joe and Angela are not ready.

It turns out that she was right. The other couple’s anger and resentment destroy the mood and lead to a much darker series of secrets, recriminations and soul-searching. What began as an awkward dinner becomes a life-changing event none of them were prepared for.

Also, in a very natural and surprising way, the film itself changes. It goes from an extremely funny but uncomfortable comedy of manners into something much more human and nuanced. The final half hour is much more serious, much more heartbreaking, and eventually much more cautiously hopeful than what preceded it.

With only the four characters on screen at all times and the entire thing taking place in a single apartment, the film has a slightly claustrophobic feel which matches the awkward situation.

The four actors bring different qualities to their characters. Rogen coils with Joe’s sarcastic anger, Wilde disappears into a woman who feels the world has passed her by and Norton is periodically welcoming and smarmy. However, it is Cruz who is the emotional and even moral center of the story. Her calm, intuitive presence becomes the film’s compass as the night spirals.

Wilde turns the apartment into a pressure cooker, letting the actors push and pull against each other until the emotional seams finally split. In the end, The Invite is less about swinging than it is about connection – who has it, who’s lost it, and who’s terrified to admit they want it back. Wilde guides the film from brittle humor into something raw and recognizably human, and the final stretch lands with a quiet ache. It’s a small story told in a small space, but it hits with surprising force.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2026 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: July 9, 2026.