Sexiness is back in American movies after an era of intimacy-averse Hollywood that all but erased the freewheeling “sex comedy” from screens. The reasons for its extended hiatus are many—polling from turned-off young moviegoers, post-#MeToo intimacy coordination and A-lister anxieties about viral screen grabs. Consequently, ribald commercial comedies fell out of fashion; classics like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Risky Business belong to far less encumbered eras.
But adult content is enjoying a revival in prestige pictures like the Oscar-winning Anora, Poor Things and Babygirl, while comedies such as Bottoms, No Hard Feelings and last year’s spouse-swap buddy picture Splitsville may signal a renewed appetite for racy laughs. Now comes Olivia Wilde’s savvy, altogether hilarious The Invite, a riot of marital unrest, temptation and the threat/thrill of polyamory, played so well by a quartet of rarely better stars that it ranks among the year’s most enjoyable moviegoing experiences.
On her third time in the director’s chair, Wilde’s The Invite is an impressive feat of sustained comic lunacy—closer to two laughs a minute than one—and the idea of sex, as both a marriage killer and an alluring liberation, exerts a gravitational pull. Working from a devilishly sharp screenplay by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, adapted from Spanish writer-director Cesc Gay’s 2020 The People Upstairs, Wilde—whose Booksmart delivered big laughs while Don’t Worry Darling brought bold style (and, ahem, a bit of Harry Styles controversy)—takes a major and assured step forward as a director.
A comedy chamber piece largely set inside the sprawling San Francisco apartment of an unhappily married couple on the verge of realizing it, The Invite is anchored by career-topping performances from Wilde and Seth Rogen as longtime spouses about to face a comic reckoning. The film opens on a petty squabble after acerbic former musician-turned-teacher Joe (Rogen) learns that his high-strung wife Angela (Wilde) has invited the new couple upstairs for a little unwanted get-to-know-you affair. As the pair talk over and walk around each other with zinger disregard, Wilde establishes a comically worn marital dynamic. They also live in a far more expensive place than they can really afford, by the grace of Joe’s deceased parents, who owned it before them, and theirs is a life of disappointing routine. For his part, depressed Joe has lost himself as an artist and abandoned his music career, while Angela is equally unfulfilled in stay-at-home doldrums.
Those upstairs neighbors arrive—do they ever—in the form of a game Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton as hilariously enlightened, libertine lovers as free as their hosts are bound. Pina, a blonde Venus vision in Cruz, is played with such non-conformist allure and sly comic predation that Cruz delivers the best supporting performance in an American movie this year. And former firefighter boyfriend Hawk (Norton) is part swinger, part life coach and so comfortable in the film’s escalating absurdity that he turns his hosts’ discomfort into the film’s comic engine.
While the dinner party goes quickly and superficially off the rails (a very funny Pina rejects everything on Angela’s over-prepared menu), what follows is a pointed dissection of commitment and fidelity over a painfully awkward, very long night. For Joe and Angela, the stakes are high—they’ve got a 12-year-old daughter who seems to be their only real common ground—but if they’re already on thin ice of deception and biting recrimination, Pina and Hawk push them into even shakier territory.
The introduction of their insanely bohemian neighbors only underscores what they’ve lost and how desperate Angela is to recapture it. Both couples have their own agendas, and there’s a funny bit of misdirection where Angela apologizes for renovation noise while the real aim is to get to the bottom of what’s happening upstairs in the middle of the night—a major source of noise—which Pina and Hawk are more than willing to explain away, to considerable comic effect.
This sequence, as Wilde performatively hangs on Cruz’s deadpan details of the etiquette of swingers, Angela determined to be in the cool kids club, is among Wilde’s finest; she’s never been this loose onscreen, and her spirited line deliveries (“Don’t be rude, look at her boobs!”) land with deadly funny precision. The desperation she’s playing here—both in her staid marriage and her need to still feel an adventurous spark—has real punch. Special mention goes to Cruz, who’s been vital and sexy and intelligent onscreen for about 35 years, here reinventing herself as a sexy comedienne that tilts the movie (and us) toward her every time she’s in frame. And Rogen could perform this material eyes closed by simply trading on his patented sardonic irreverence, but here, particularly later in the picture, he points those trademarks toward some poignant truths.
Throughout, he’s used to maximum effect as the straight man to the escalating hijinks; a scene in which he and Cruz steal away and propose coupling up is fall-down funny, as is an awkward kitchen tryst between Wilde and Norton, both couples spiraling toward polyamorous consummation and something deeper that cuts to the core of long-term commitment. Once this quartet takes off, you start to notice how carefully the comedy is built into the characters, and how Wilde’s camera catches it all in side glances, asides and pained reactions; each actor has such command that anywhere the camera looks, something special is happening. Wilde ingeniously carves out this comedic psychodrama in tight close-ups. Yet somehow, her movie never feels stage-bound; the apartment is an integral character, as if in on the jokes.
The Invite has a farcical acceleration that’s a blast to plug into, and the hilarity comes out of something painful underneath; the film’s swerve toward third-act Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? truth-telling can feel slightly abrupt; consider that a minor non-quibble. During the film’s final stretch, it’s hard to believe that anyone in a long-term relationship won’t feel a shock of recognition, especially after a knockout exchange about how to go on, together, you sometimes have to accept that things as they were are over. This is exceptionally fine writing and a reminder of how good American comedies used to be when grown-ups talked about sex, marriage and big “existential” questions (there’s a funny joke about that too).
At times, The Invite recalls vintage Woody Allen in its stinging one-liners and mordant observations on relationships, love and the human condition. I laughed to tears—an uncommon thing in American comedy today—and found myself unexpectedly moved by the end.
Highly recommended.
4 stars
