The Invite

I’m glad I waited to see The Invite on Prime Video because – while Olivia Wilde helms this forebodingly unpredictable sex comedy – it’s not worth a trip to the multiplex. Adapted by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones from the Spanish film Sentimental (2020), it’s basically a four-hander, set in San Francisco. What happens is for you to discover – as all four actors play their parts convincingly. Reminiscent of but not nearly as good as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? it’s yet another deep dive into a tense, troubled, middle-age marriage.

If you like edgy dinner parties that promise the possibility of sex, drugs and a rock n roll of emotions, then make sure you RSVP for The Invite. Olivia Wilde directs herself, Seth Rogen, Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz in this relationship dramady that will leave you evaluating your own partnership. The film takes place in the living room of the San Francisco apartment of Angela (Wilde) and Joe (Rogen). They’ve invited their rather lively upstairs neighbors, Hawk and Pina (Norton and Cruz), over for dinner, but when the party spirals into unexpected places, Angela and Joe don’t know if they’ve reignited the spark in their troubled marriage or lit the flame that burns it down.