Kimber Myers
Releasing The Invite during Pride Month is a diabolical choice. Directed by Olivia Wilde, this comedy about marital dysfunction could also be called “Are Straight People OK?” (The answer is no, we are not.) The Invite centers on two couples at a dinner party, and it stumbles along in the drunken footsteps of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or that episode of The Office that parodies it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this isn’t as thematically rich as either the original Edward Albee play or the Mike Nichols film (or Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which it is also indebted to), but it is an lightly mean-spirited and genuinely hilarious four-hander starring Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton.
Based on the 2020 Spanish comedy Sentimental, The Invite gets an American adaptation from Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, who also wrote the similarly themed Celeste & Jesse Forever together. Yet while that film followed a couple’s divorce and attempts to remain friends across months, The Invite is set over the course of just a single night in San Francisco, focusing on one very bad dinner party. As soon as Joe (Rogen) stumbles in the door after a long day at work, his wife, Angela (Wilde), springs news on him: their neighbors Piña (Cruz) and Hawk (Norton) are coming over for dinner in just a few minutes. Angela has pulled together an impressive spread of charcuterie and cheese, but when they arrive, Piña declines the food, saying she doesn’t eat meat or dairy (even though she has brought flan). Joe didn’t see Angela’s text message to pick up a bottle of wine, so they struggle to find something to drink (in one of the movie’s more inexplicable subplots). And yet, the foursome still manage to get a bit of a buzz going during this very awkward evening, which is helpful when Piña and Hawk reveal that they have a proposition (cue eyebrow waggle) for their straight-laced downstairs neighbors.
There’s a lot that I can buy about The Invite. Joe and Angela are believably unhappy in their marriage — and have been seemingly content to stay in it for the sake of their off-screen daughter — but it’s easy to see what attracted them to each other in the relationship’s early days. And like every other woman in her 40s right now, Angela rightfully brings up perimenopause as a stressor in her life and in her marriage. Joe is obnoxious (though likably so, since he’s played by Rogen), and he feels absolutely like someone you know. Similarly, I think I’ve met couples who are the real-life analogues of Hawk and Piña at friends’ parties.
However, what does not feel remotely plausible is that Wilde’s Angela is not asking her neighbors if they have dietary restrictions before having them over for a meal. She says that she’s an inept host (and she is, other than her gift at arranging an Instagram-worthy charcuterie board), but there is no way that she lives in that city in this current year without a second’s consideration of what people don’t eat. Also. Cruz’s Pina doesn’t eat dairy (and didn’t tell Angela about her restrictions), but she brings over flan?! (I suppose it could be a vegan flan, but I’m sure that would’ve been mentioned because people will not shut up about shit like this). I know that San Francisco has been taken over by tech bros, but Angela and Joe display far too much sexual naivete for living in a city that was once a counterculture capital and remains a big city with a diverse population. It’s little details like these that eat at you, like that annoying habit that your partner has that drives you absolutely insane. (And yes, “your partner.” My husband is great.)
Yet for all its flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed The Invite. The script is gasp-inducingly funny, and all four of these actors deliver its witty lines with impeccable timing. Wilde is perhaps the weakest of the quartet with her portrayal of a woman with a lot of pent-up nervous energy and no outlet. She’s better at playing more confident characters. Meanwhile as director, she has made a movie that is a huge step up from the sophomore slump of Don’t Worry Darling, though it never approaches the delights of her debut, Booksmart.
There’s a bit of bite to many of The Invite’s jokes, as it pokes fun at the issues — both big and small and internal and external — that can drive a wedge between two people. Yet in the end, it refuses to draw real blood. It might begin with the Oscar Wilde quote, “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry,” but it serves more as a cautionary tale of how not to talk to your spouse rather than a warning to avoid the state of matrimony altogether.
B
“The Invite” is out Friday in select theaters, and opens wide on July 10.
