Among Sundance’s great pleasures is the experience of a film steadily building buzz to the point where it becomes the talk of the fest. Seats become scarce and a unique electricity imbues a charge to those screenings. Just as trying to get into a showing of Celine Song’s Past Lives became a herculean task, so was the case this year with Olivia Wilde’s The Invite, an uproariously funny take on modern relationships. I’m happy to report that the hype is real.
Small in scale, yet so much greater than the sum of its parts, Wilde conducts her quartet of players to an orchestral performance. She builds the dramatic tension of a relationship-turned-powder-keg from years of complacency and poor communication over staccato strings until it reaches its summit, only for it to drop and rise again. Employing just four principal actors, including herself, and a single apartment, it’s an impressive feat to pull off and a testament to her progression as actor-turned-director.
The Invite begins with a hat-tip to another Wilde. “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry,” said Oscar Wilde, a cheeky aphorism that warns of trouble to come. Wilde plays the self-conscious and eager-to-please Angela. A thoroughly modern woman, she’s keen to utilize the copious amount of cultural sophistication she’s ingested from podcasts and social media. That zest for engaging with effortful consideration bumps against the snarky and cynical view of her husband Joe (Seth Rogen), a music teacher with no passion for teaching or anything else. Their atrophied marriage has grown rote and contentious with an uptight dynamic that results in a hilariously executed degree of fast-paced bickering.
Once again, a Seth Rogen character has big neighbor problems. This time it’s with the tenants of the apartment directly above them, whose loud, erotic escapades penetrate into their sexless abode––and, much to Joe’s chagrin, Angela has invited them to an impromptu dinner party. She’s pulled out all the stops to impress psychotherapist / sexologist Pina (Penélope Cruz) and retired firefighter / rug enthusiast Hawk (Edward Norton). Angela goes out of her way to welcome the loving, open couple and struggles to control Joe’s antipathy toward them. The extroverted, intensely sincere Pina and Hawk are a paradigm of relationship bliss to Angela, while Joe’s thinly veiled antipathy undercuts her enthusiasm. The combination of personalities clash and harmonize during a rollercoaster evening in which dirty laundry is aired and genial facades burst from the brutal honesty they were meant to contain.
Everyone pulls their weight in Wilde’s third feature, adapted from Cesc Gay’s Spanish comedy The People Upstairs. Rogen is in the pocket as the self-effacing everyman with his irresistibly gruff delivery. Wilde’s Angela fawns over Pina and Hawk, who are frequently intertwined, while Joe and Angela maintain their unhealthy distance. As the two miserable souls deprived of connection soak up the overflowing comfort of their neighbors, they begin releasing pieces of themselves that feel as if they’ve been held in clenched fists for years.
Screenwriters Will McCormack and Rashida Jones pen a superb adaptation that’s relatable but also affords the audience a comfortable distance from which to point and laugh. What’s most impressive is Wilde’s direction, molding this 108-minute, nearly single-location film into one of the decade’s most kinetic comedies. Of her three features, it’s her two comedies in which she appears most comfortable as a filmmaker. As with Booksmart, she has a knack for timing and the interplay of personalities. Her sophomore effort Don’t Worry Darling, a much larger production, dove into social science fiction, stirring many ideas that didn’t coalesce. What’s clear is that she had a vision, and I appreciated the big swing, given the momentum she earned. The Invite feels like a directorial synthesis of the two. Framing and blocking tell the story on their own, keeping the chamber comedy dynamic. Adam Newport-Berra shot the feature on 35mm film, putting The Invite on the aesthetic level of its elegantly comedic predecessors from the likes of Nora Ephron and Mike Nichols. She doesn’t seem the type of artist who will allow herself to be boxed into any genre; Hollywood should continue to let her explore as a filmmaker.
The sensation of watching Wilde’s third feature in a packed theater felt like something from another time. With comedies in short supply at the box office, it’s been years since I last experienced a full theater so engaged and delighted with the onscreen antics that the shared laughter can overpower the following lines of dialogue. With A24 winning the bidding war, it shouldn’t be long before this joyous time comes to a theater near you.
The Invite premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and will be released by A24.