The Invite Review: Wilde’s Best Effort Yet

The Invite is Olivia Wilde’s best effort yet, delivering a horny, loud, soulful, mostly stressful, witty outlook on a relationship hanging by a thread.

Joe’s (Seth Rogen, of The Studio) daily life consists of expressing his disdain for his job as a music teacher and complaining about his back pain. Angela (Wilde) spends her days redecorating their home and gossiping about their upstairs neighbors’ sex life. Both barely talk to each other with respect anymore; there’s so much anger behind every word they utter. To say their marriage is on thin ice would be putting it lightly. One day, Angela invites their enigmatic upstairs neighbors, Hawk (Edward Norton, of A Complete Unknown) and Piña (Penélope Cruz, of The Bride!), for a dinner party, and the night spirals into unexpected places that will determine whether the spark in Angela and Joe’s marriage will be reignited or die down.

Screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will McCormack understand that romantic love is one of life’s most confusing and enchanting experiences. It’s different from loving family or friends. Even when wronged by kin, we tend to maintain affection and respect, almost out of obligation, toward a parent, sibling, or other relative. Platonic friendships can operate on a similar vein to romantic ones, sharing a level of intimacy. Although ending a friendship can hurt just as much as ending a love affair, friendships often lack the sense of commitment that makes them easier to overcome.

Being in a relationship is different, though. Despite flaws you might identify in a suitor, if things go right, you’re actively choosing them for who they are, and in return, they get to see the real you. Not the version of yourself in public, at family reunions, or at brunch with friends. They live with the real, often messy you. The Invite wouldn’t have worked if Rogen and Wilde hadn’t conveyed the history their characters share within seconds of their on-screen interaction.

We don’t need flashbacks to grasp Angela and Joe’s predicament. Amid their snappy dialogue, a strong bond between the two is evident. They’re reading each other’s minds while ignoring the needs of their partners. For a couple who know how to make each other tick, they’re constantly avoiding the baggage that affects them both: Joe’s failed musician status and Angela’s prioritization of family over her artistic endeavors. Production designer Jade Haely, along with Sandra Doyle Carmola’s art direction and set decorator Adam Willis, illustrate this beautifully through Angela and Joe’s home.

Organized chaos would be a fitting phrase to describe the clutter scattered all over the kitchen, bedroom, office, and living space. It’s just neat enough to convince someone it is a regular home upon first observation, but if you spend more than five minutes taking in the setting, you’ll see how much of a mess it is, just like Angela and Joe’s marriage. Then, there is The Invite’s brilliant use of mirrors.

Wilde keeps returning to the visual of Joe and Angela talking or arguing with the other while looking at their own reflection. We tend to view the image of a person in a mirror as a representation of absolute truth. You might be able to lie to a stranger or loved one, but not to yourself. In The Invite, mirrors are less reflections and more of a source of deflection. Rather than hold themselves accountable or speak up about their feelings, they redirect blame or criticism. This is done just as much through Rogen and Wilde’s delivery of the dialogue as through their surroundings.

Angela and Joe have forgotten how to appreciate each other’s company. We see Joe in significant physical pain at least twice in the film, and Angela can’t help but scoff at him and view him as an inconvenience. She lights up when someone asks about the effort she put into remodeling their home, while Joe simply expresses indifference.

Joe’s fatal flaw, which some might perceive as a strength, is his brutally honest conviction. Honesty can be liberating, but it can also be cruel when it comes from a place of hostility, which is how he mainly uses it against Angela. On the other hand, she continuously seeks validation. Angela spends a whole day prepping food that turns out Piña doesn’t eat and setting decorations that will impress Hawk. Yet, rather than performative, which it admittedly is, there is a sadness to this action.

Then we have the perfect couple in Hawk and Piña—two individuals who can’t keep their hands off each other and praise one another—the complete opposite of our leads. A teenage-like chemistry is present between them, making Angela and Joe feel worse about their marriage. They are attractive not just physically, but in a manner that would make anyone wonder, “how do they make it work?”.

Cruz and Norton are naturally smooth and seductive in the way they carry themselves. The tone of their voices is soothing, and their vocabulary is reassuring. Above all, they’re empathetic. Hawk and Piña identify Angela and Joe’s spiritual and sexual frustrations and offer to help. Hawk does so by simply expressing an interest in Angela’s artistic vision for her home; Piña does so by being a buddy to Joe, willing to smoke weed, listen to music, and relax.

Ironically, what starts as a spicy arrangement between both couples—an imperfect one and a seemingly perfect one—soon reveals that they’re not that different. Hawk and Piña have frustrations of their own; they’re just better at hiding them. Wilde then dives into this idea that all love is meant to crack. It’s just a matter of you letting it happen or actively working through the anxieties of your partner and your own.

Devonté Hynes’ original score communicates these anxieties exceptionally through his compositions. Think One Battle After Another or Succession. Similarly to Jonny Greenwood and Nicholas Britell, Hynes captures the absurd, hectic, and silly decisions of our characters. The music can be funny when Angela and Joe awkwardly try to match Hawk and Piña’s energy. It is stressful when something is said out of line. It can be somber when struck with the reality that things are sometimes meant to end.

As The Invite stops dancing around the question of whether Angela and Joe should keep trying or give up on their marriage, and directly forces them to reckon with this decision, Olivia Wilde shifts to a much more earnest tone that feels cathartic to the film and the audience. What happens when two individuals have grown so used to one another that they’ve forgotten why they became a couple in the first place? Do you stay because that partner has become part of your routine, and maybe you have children together, or call it quits and free yourselves from a steady state of misery? The Invite humorously sparks these uncomfortable conversations.

The Invite will be released in select US theatres on June 26, 2026, nationwide on July 10, and in UK and Irish cinemas on July 3.

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