The Invite review: Penelope Cruz steals the show in Olivia Wilde’s relationship drama

5 min readJul 10, 2026 05:41 PM IST

The Invite movie review: If you think the Olivia Wilde film will go a certain way, it is surprising the tonal shifts The Invite makes.

The Invite movie review: Perhaps nothing spoils a meal faster than bad company. Scratch that. It takes bad company trying to put on a happy face to make it really stink.

And, Angela (Olivia Wilde) is trying hard, really hard. Why she is, is evident to us by and by as layers are peeled off the resentment and bitterness that have built up between her and husband Joe (Seth Rogen).

The guests for whom Angela plans a spread, from an elaborate charcuterie board to a from-the-recipe-book soufflé, are their upstairs neighbours. Pina is Spanish and “beautiful” and “cool” and “has presence” (an effortlessly posh, and aware of it, Penélope Cruz). Angela clearly is taken in by her and, if not that, with the clearly loud sex-filled relationship she has with boyfriend Hawk (Edward Norton).

Joe obsesses about it too, alarming Angela with the threat that he will complain to them about it. He is angry at Angela for springing the guests upon him at the end of another frustrating day for him, teaching music at a small conservatory school. Plus he has made home painfully, riding uphill on a collapsible bike that Angela has him use for all the “good” reasons.

So it is that by the time Pina and Hawk ring the bell to Angela-Joe’s newly renovated, and ready-to-be-shown-off, home, tensions are literally waiting to spill over.

In her third film as director, Wilde has chosen to remake a Spanish film, which itself was based on a stage play. And, The Invite could very well be a play, as the camera weaves in and around four characters and a tight space. They are in each other’s ways, traipsing around the clutter of a home and a house and a life, in a deliberate and often careless way.

If you think the film will go a certain way, it is surprising the tonal shifts The Invite makes. The first part is a comedy and contrast of manners, between a couple who are well-settled into classically prosaic parenthood and middle age, and a couple who are still discovering each other in the first flush of their relationship. Unlike some other films which have attempted the same, Angela’s artifice in presenting a surface as polished as her art college-learned house decor doesn’t fool anybody. It’s also not treated for laughs by those picking up the cues.

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The second part is where the sex comedy comes in as Angela and Joe become aware of how much more adventurous Pina and Hawk’s lives are than they imagined. Angela and Joe drop all pretence of coolness here, and as avidly demand a peek into the lives of their neighbours as any of us would.

In the third part, The Invite takes another turn, for a glimpse into how relationships turn into but also how they began; how the longer two people are together, the more oblivious they can be to each other. “We only have a few chances at a meaningful relationship in life,” says Pina. And the reality of that hits you.

While uniformly well-acted, The Invite’s stand-out performance is by in-house cynic and perennial-pessimist Rogen. As a former band member and a one-song wonder, as a husband who feels increasingly distant from his wife, and as a man with a back problem, he pulls off a difficult role as the film’s giant sore thumb.

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On the other end is Cruz as Pina, the woman with the looks of the actor and the credentials of being a “psychotherapist” and “sexologist”. As the smartest person in the room, Pina could easily be insufferable, particularly in the ease with which she dispenses advice, from perimenopause to desire. However, Cruz injects warmth and charm to make Pina a guest you want to host – and impress.

The relationship between Hawk and Pina is the only inauthentic note in The Invite, with the minor squabble they have slapped on clumsily.

But, we can take this pinch of salt.

The Invite movie director: Olivia Wilde

The Invite movie cast: Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, Penélope Cruz

The Invite movie rating: 4 stars