The Invite

Grade: A-

In 2012, I was commissioned to write a score and incidental music for a community theatre production of Driving Miss Daisy. People who saw it told me that my music felt like a fourth character in this three-person play. It’s one of the greatest compliments I’ve received in my career. The music in The Invite often feels like an additional character in the movie. I was painfully aware of its borderline intrusive presence in the opening scenes. By the second half, either it becomes less prevalent, or I simply stopped noticing it. I suspect it was the latter.

The Invite is a remake of a Spanish film from 2020 called The People Upstairs. I’m not seeing that it was ever a play, but it absolutely could be one, and I’d love to see it on stage. There are only four actors, and it all takes place in one location. It begins with Joe (Seth Rogen) arriving home to find that his wife Angela (Olivia Wilde) is preparing their apartment for guests—none other than their upstairs neighbors. Their loud, raucous physical activity in the bedroom has kept Joe and Angela awake many a night, and even made Angela jealous. She has never been made to scream like that.

Joe causes her to be vocal in other ways, as they frequently bicker. The screenplay is like if Neil Simon were still alive, writing, and was asked to “go a little blue.” The infamous neighbors arrive: Piña (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton). The conversations among them begin strangely and tensely, but loosen up as they gain more courage of the liquid—and legal-in-most-states—variety. The earlier dialogue may discourage you from ever having people over, but it takes a supremely interesting turn when we learn the second meaning of the movie’s title.

I can imagine the excitement film actors must feel when they get to participate in a raw, dialogue-driven “filmed play.” They get to do the ensemble thing, ranting and raving and getting in their feels. It can be all too easy for that kind of material to go off the deep end into overactive melodrama. The Invite takes it as far as it possibly can without devolving into silliness. All four actors are up to the task, especially Wilde, who also directed. Her presence as both director and lead actress is fully justified. It’s one of the best self-directed lead performances I’ve ever seen in a movie, up there with Kevin Costner in Dances With Wolves and Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby. Wilde plays so many emotions and beats, making for an impressive juggling act even if you didn’t know she also worked behind the scenes.

You will leave with many things to unpack and ruminate on, as will the characters. One of my biggest takeaways is how we tend to beat ourselves up over our lives if we didn’t achieve as much as we hoped—but when we describe them to other people, they often sound pretty great. From Joe’s perspective, it’s, “I was in a failed band, and now I teach music at a humble conservatory.” But when Piña and Hawk hear about it, their response is essentially, “You were in a band, released music, and now you’re a music professor? That’s awesome. Way to go.”

The Invite is a powerful movie with a dedicated, committed cast. It will be the most meaningful, thought-provoking film to open in theaters this weekend. If you can see it in a crowded theater and share the experience with the laughter and gasps of a full audience, that will be ideal—like seeing a play. Olivia Wilde took Oscar Wilde’s last name as her professional name, and begins this movie with a quote from him. That’s one of the many ways she makes it personal. The Invite makes it personal, for them and for us.

Grade: A-