Sunday, June 28, 2026
The Invite
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.Then, for the remaining of its running time, the movie tries to prove him right, with plenty of laughs, deliciously awkward moments, and a kind of raw honesty many comedies are too scared to touch.
Joe (Seth Rogen) is a former indie musician who now teaches for a steady paycheck. His wife, Angela (Olivia Wilde), decides to invite their upstairs neighbors over, without bothering to warn him. The neighbors are the breezy confident and easy charming Hawk (Edward Norton) and his therapist partner Piña (Penélope Cruz). They show up like philosophical provocateurs instead of casual neighbors. The rest of the evening is nothing like everyone has expected it to be.
What keeps the film interesting is how fluidly the dynamics shift among these four. Adapted by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones from writer-director Cesc Gay's "The People Upstairs" (Sentimental | Spain 2020), the film has an earned, unforced rapport at its center that came out of an intensive pre-shoot workshop between director and cast. The alliances in the apartment change so much that feel both absurd and completely true to life. By the end, the lines between therapist and patient, guest and host, liberated and repressed, have blurred beyond recovery.
All four leads are terrific with perfect timing. Seth Rogen might be both the funniest and saddest he's ever been; Joe's dry humor turns heartbreaking before you can even spot the shift. Olivia Wilde is revelatory as the wounded Angela, trying desperately to steer an evening she has already lost control of. Edward Norton brings heart to a character who, let's be honest, might not even deserve it. And Penélope Cruz? She's perhaps the most purely pleasurable to watch: a therapist who deploys candor as a weapon and warmth as a trap.
The film's jokes are grown-up in the best way—sharp, specific, unflattering, and pointed straight at anyone who's ever bargained with themselves in marriage. Some jokes sting, and that sting feels uncomfortably familiar. The cringe and the laugh are the same reflex here.
The movie takes place in a San Francisco apartment, and the city appears just long enough at the opening to remind you how much it might have given the film, the fog, the hills, and the light. If you were lucky enough to catch it at the Castro Theatre during the opening night at the 69th SFFILM Festival, you might well have wished the homecoming had more of the City in it. The apartment, though, is gorgeous, all soft blues and greens against fancy ceilings and moldings. However, that's more like a theater stage setting, not really for cinema.
Still, the film shows its intelligence and mostly delivers its laughs, and if it sacrifices San Francisco for a living room, what happens in that living room turns out to be worth the trade. This is the adult comedy the summer needed.
"The Invite" opens in theaters on Friday, July 2, 2026.
