The Invite

If Seth Rogen shows up at your party, you'll have a good time. If he shows up in your movie, you're bound to think, ah, there's Seth Rogen being Seth Rogen again. He's not a terrible actor, but it's hard to see the character instead of Rogen playing one. He's always the same.

In The Invite, Rogen plays Joe, one half of a married couple that has grown apart. Olivia Wilde, who directs, plays Angela. They've invited the neighbors, Edward Norton (Hawk) and Penélope Cruz (Pína), over for dinner. Well, Angela has. Joe doesn't want them.

Hawk and Pína watch the broken marriage unravel across the first half of the film. Joe and Angela are middle-aged people whose lives fell short of their dreams, and they blame each other for the shortfall. It's sad. We all know people like this. I don't blame anyone else for mine, but I became someone other than the person I meant to be. Damn.

The story turns when Hawk and Pína reveal that they host orgies in their apartment, and that they want Joe and Angela to join. Tonight. And they're up for it! Joe and Angela haven't had sex in a year. Then this gets screwed up too.

The film doesn't argue for it, but opening a marriage to save it strikes me as strange. I've met people who have tried. It tends to go wrong. They fall for other people and the marriage strains further. No good.

The film ends with Joe and Angela agreeing to sleep in separate rooms. Joe, who has shunned the piano for years, sits down and plays. Angela comes and sits beside him. Maybe there's hope. Probably not.

The Invite holds its tension, and it's uncomfortable at times. Most of that is Wilde.

Almost all of it happens in one apartment. It could be a play. It was: The Invite remakes the 2020 Spanish film The People Upstairs, which Cesc Gay adapted from his own stage play.