‘The Invite’ Review: You’re Going to Want to Attend Olivia Wilde’s Crackling, Crazy Entertaining Dinner Party from Hell

Sundance: The director also stars in the film alongside Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penelope Cruz. The foursome are wonderfully unpredictable together in a great comedy with plenty to say about life, love, and nightmare that is marriage.

It opens with a classic epigraph from Oscar Wilde: “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.” Cut to: a clearly miserable Seth Rogen, presumably very married indeed. Olivia Wilde’s “The Invite” may start simply enough — marriage is bad, just look at this broken man — but it almost instantly shifts into a different register that makes its comedic aspirations clear. It’s so silly and so simple: music teacher Rogen’s Joe just can’t get his goddamn folding bike out of a door, making a spectacle that his students can only stare at, one of them muttering a “what the fuck” for all of us.

But don’t let that simplicity fool you, because what Wilde is saying here (with a superb script by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, who know a thing about relationships gone bad) is something much bigger and bolder. She knows exactly what she’s doing, how to calibrate between big laughs and broken hearts, how to use her cast to great effect, and how to surprise her audience at nearly every turn. This is less than two minutes into the movie, wonderfully setting the stage for the crackling, crazy entertaining dinner party from hell to come.

While Joe might be dragging his ass through his downbeat life (folding bike very much in tow), his wife Angela (Wilde) is going through her own motions, which happen to be amped up by her naturally anxious personality. Angela is preparing the pair’s stunning San Francisco apartment (an inspired setting, rife with both sprawling rooms and a slightly off-kilter floor plan that keeps us just confused enough) for something rare: company! The long-time couple don’t have many friends and they don’t have many people over, so tonight’s dinner with their upstairs neighbors has provided Angela with something very big to fixate on.

How much does she need something to fixate on? She bought a new rug and at least six kinds of cheese for the occasion. She is making a fucking soufflé! Joe can’t even be bothered to pick up wine on the way home. Joe is barely in the door before the inevitably-compared-to “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” antics start unfolding. Made even more nerve-shredding by Devonté Hynes’ score, a tense offering that plays out (and loud!) during Joe and Angela’s seemingly constant bickering. But Wilde keeps things pitched just so, allowing the pair’s worst moments to still feel funny and relatable.

But Angela’s anxiety also makes her unpredictable (and unpredictable in an entirely different way than Wilde’s other great Sundance 2026 performance), and Wilde soon taps into a natural agility that only ups the comedic ante in what feels like her best performance yet. (There is a bit of physical comedy, early in the film, that involves Angela reacting to a ruined dinner with a comedic timing that instantly catapults Wilde to a new level, it’s a five-second moment that is aces enough to inform the rest of the film to come). Wilde’s expressive face and big eyes tap into a Lucille Ball elasticity; the film would be funny enough if it was only its director turning in such a hilarious performance, but she’s hardly alone in this endeavour.

With just four stars in the film, everyone has to count, and Wilde hasn’t skimped on her co-stars. Rogen’s Joe gets to play straight man, often serving as our eyes into an increasingly fraught affair. Wilde and Rogen are good enough together, and then, oh! Our guests of honor have arrived, Hawk (Edward Norton) and his girlfriend Pina (Penelope Cruz), the much-feared, long-desired neighbors from upstairs, mostly known to Angela and Joe through the very loud noises of their nightly love-making sessions.

If Joe and Angela’s simmering resentment and hard-won affection are one side of the coin, Hawk and Pina’s weirdo sexuality and wacky intrigue are the other. These two are into each other, and somehow, they’re also into the Joe and Angela show. (Of note, both are very good here, but Norton is taking such obvious delight in the whole thing, he just manages to edge out Cruz, who still gets her time to shine later in the film.)

Why have Hawk and Pina come to this ill-fated dinner? Why does Angela want them there so badly? Why can’t Joe even pretend to be a decent host? Eh, well, you can probably guess, just based on what we know of the two couples — miserable marrieds, sexually adventures strangers, etc. — but Jones and McCormack’s script has lots of fun getting there, with Wilde’s zippy direction and core foursome working their way through a comedy of manners that eventually feels like a comedy of errors.

Smart craftsmanship elsewhere helps everything glide along, including costuming choices from Arianne Phillips that cleverly set up the couples in opposition to each other and cinematography from Adam Newport-Berra that crafts interesting dynamics in artfully made frames. All of it feels impeccably chosen without being showy or affected.

As Wilde splits her couples and brings them back again, we are able to see different sides of each character and the roles they play within their relationships. Angela’s nerves make way for a giddy chemistry with Hawk (the two of them bond over, of all things, their shared love of rugs, one of many running jokes that keep up the clip). Joe’s mystified anger is softened by Pina’s easy grace (and, yes, yes, Rogen and Cruz do smoke a joint together at one point).

Wilde’s previous film, “Don’t Worry, Darling,” was somewhat similarly driven by questions about the price of relationships, the cost of the lies we tell, the impossibility of really knowing someone, but Wilde answers those same questions here with far more insight and entertaining humor (it cannot be overstated how fun it is to watch this one in a packed theater). The film’s third act stumbles a bit, trading in its high humor for darker emotions that Wilde cannot quite as deftly navigate (and with, unless I am very mistaken, a tiny, left-turn mystery about the true nature of Hawk and Pina).

Still, the rest of this meal (light on the soufflé, heavy on the jambon) is such a treat, a truly adult comedy with plenty to say and even more laughs to share. Accept this invite, and fast.

Grade: B+

“The Invite” premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire’s film reviews and critical thoughts? Subscribe here to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers.