Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen Relationship Drama Overstays Its Welcome

Olivia Wilde’s The Invite is an atavistic chamber piece that recalls the cinematic pleasures of watching beautiful people crash out and argue. Wilde’s follow-up to the critically panned Don’t Worry Darling flirts with incendiary melodrama before settling into a more tragic, hopeless register. Centering on two couples who gather for dinner, only to end up spilling secrets, desires, and resentment about each other over immaculately plated charcuterie, each conversation feels like watching technicians try to diffuse explosives.

There’s an inherently performative aspect to any given social situation, and The Invite finds great humor and awkwardness in characters who explore the tension between what they say and what they think. Viewers who suffer from second-hand embarrassment might find their tolerance tested by characters’ tendency to walk right up to the line of what’s socially unacceptable. Hilariously acted by its four leads, thanks to Wilde’s effective direction and Adam Newport-Berra’s immersive cinematography, The Invite always feels like it’s more than the sum of its parts — although its thematic reach is often frustratingly in conflict with the realistic story it’s attempting to tell.

Apart from the film’s opening sequence, The Invite does not leave the home of its central couple, Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Olivia Wilde). Newport-Berra works wonders with the camera to make their home feel not only expansive but occasionally terrifying. You can see the frayed threads of Joe and Angela’s relationship; they’re the type of couple where one more argument could be their breaking point. When Joe returns from his job as a music teacher, he’s confronted by Angela for not bringing wine for the guests they’ll be hosting. Joe denies ever hearing about the dinner. At the crescendo of the argument, the camera glides through the house from both points of view. Shadows feel larger, the darkness of the outside feels more enveloping, and the distance between the dining table and kitchen feels longer; Newport-Berra knows that after experiencing an argument with a loved one, familiar surroundings can feel unsettling, and he captures that here to chilling effect.

Wilde directs from a script by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, who understand with painful clarity that, for people in a long-term relationship, the seemingly small transgressions (like forgetting wine) are always the catalyst for bigger battles and set the stage to address bottled-up resentments. The conflict is always about what’s under the surface, and Joe and Angela feel remarkably alive because we’re able to see their deeper emotions emerge through body language, even if they never address the elephants in the room explicitly.

The couple will have no choice but to embrace some modicum of honesty, though, as Joe tells Angela that this dinner is finally the right time to tell their guests, neighbors Hawk (Edward Norton) and Pína (Penélope Cruz), that their loud sex is causing too much of a disruption. Naturally, this horrifies Angela, who tries her best to stop Joe from bringing it up. This section of the film, where the two spar and try to outdo each other while simultaneously trying to host their guests, is when The Invite is at its strongest, because it allows all of its performers to shine. Rogen delivers career-best work, finding ways to tap into the pathos and relatability of Joe’s unlikeable qualities; he’s someone who knows he’s the smartest guy in the room, or at least deludes himself into believing it. Angela, in contrast, unsuccessfully tries to hide what she thinks. As confident as Wilde is, she’s well suited to being flustered, and plays Angela all too relatably as someone willing to hollow themselves out to be agreeable.

Cruz and Norton are the characters’ comic foils and, in many ways, act as ghosts of Christmas future, offering a present look at how life could be different while also encouraging the couple to think about the self-destructive path they’re on. For all of Joe and Angela’s fancy cheese, parties, and success, it’s evident that something is not right; it’s far too easy to coast, to forget what matters, to realize you’ve sacrificed your dreams for an easy life.

Good performances can’t save the film’s inability to reconcile the central tension between whether it wants to be farcical or realistic. As the night goes on and the champagne bottles empty, the couples begin to shed the niceties and dive into issues of relational dysfunction. From Joe giving up on his dreams and dragging Angela into the depths of despair with him, to the ways in which Angela’s need to constantly be liked prevents the couple from forming meaningful relationships, there’s serious, adult conflict that’s worth exploring.

The problem is that The Invite’s seriousness is incongruous with the solutions it tries to offer. Pína, who works as a therapist, asks whether Angela and Joe have ever considered splitting in light of their differences. While not entirely unviable, the film’s focus narrows onto the idea that perhaps the only way to be fulfilled and happy is to separate. Is that really the only option? Do Joe and Angela not have a community they could consult instead, or at least ask to help mediate conflict? By presenting such strawman arguments, it becomes aggravating to witness three-dimensional characters lose all sense of logic and relatability when the crisis becomes more evident.

It’s this narrative development that makes it hard to fully recommend RSVPing for The Invite. Its pontifications are too smug to elevate it beyond an impressive acting showcase for its four leads. Life is too messy and solutions too nuanced for films like The Invite, which purport themselves to be the work of lived experience, but can’t resist their shallow provocations.