{"id":625133,"date":"2026-06-06T23:37:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T23:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/625133\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T23:37:32","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T23:37:32","slug":"the-invite-review-olivia-wildes-wild-ride-of-an-orgy-comedy-is-the-funniest-film-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/625133\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invite review: Olivia Wilde\u2019s wild ride of an orgy comedy is the funniest film of the year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taking a little of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice<\/a>, a sprinkle of Mike Nichols, a toke or two of stoner comedy silliness and a big huff of post-Woody Allen urbanite repression, Olivia Wilde\u2019s latest slots into a rich lineage of hilariously awkward sex comedies. With a stellar cast\u00a0 \u2013 Wilde, Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, Pen\u00e9lope Cruz \u2013 finding alchemy in their contrasting styles, it\u2019s daringly close to the bone and frequently fall-off-your-chair funny.<\/p>\n

And with apologies to Vanilla Sky<\/a> stans, it\u2019s comfortably the best US remake of a Spanish film yet. Cesc Gay\u2019s Goya-nominated The People Upstairs is transplanted from Barcelona to the one-time home of free love, San Francisco, where fraying married couple Joe (Rogen) and Angela (Wilde) are finding love of any description hard to come by.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The bellyaching, jaundiced Joe has got back to their luxe apartment from his unfulfilling job as a music teacher to find Angela putting the finishing touches on a platter of cheeses and \u2018jamon\u2019. She\u2019s sent their kid to the in-laws and invited the upstairs neighbours over for a soir\u00e9e; the same neighbours who\u2019ve been keeping them awake with noisy late-night sex. Nursing a bad back and a burning desire for a spliff, Joe is horrified by the whole idea. She\u2019s seriously high-strung; he doesn\u2019t seem to have any strings left at all. Meanwhile, the score, by Devont\u00e9 Hynes, aka Blood Orange, scuttles through your brain like a spider in the bathtub.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Amusingly, the bickering doesn\u2019t stop when Norton\u2019s ex-fireman (\u2018fireperson\u2019) Hawk and Cruz\u2019s sex therapist P\u00edna knock on the door. They\u2019ve heard the row but Hawk loves the energy. He loves the rugs, the new refurbishment, the whole vibe. P\u00edna is exuberant and amused by this warring couple. Their easy dynamic \u2013 including whispered sweet nothings in Spanish \u2013\u00a0 drives Joe even more nuts. What do they have that he and Angela don\u2019t? Apart from sex.<\/p>\n

These\u00a0four supreme comic actors get a stream of killer lines<\/p>\n

It takes craft to make the ensuing interplay and bickering come together so effortlessly. The blocking and camerawork foreground the right characters at all the right moments, not leaning too heavily on the hurf-hurfing Rogen for easy laughs but manoeuvring around the smart but sterile apartment to reveal new layers to each of the characters. Will McCormack and Rashida Jones\u2019 pinsharp script gives these four supreme comic actors a stream of killer lines. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s more accurate to call The Invite a comedy about sex \u2013 how it shapes our relationships, what happens when we don\u2019t have it, and when\u2019s the right time to bring up pegging \u2013 rather than a comedy in which people have a lot of sex. Honesty is the theme, the oh-so-challenging ingredient to any successful relationship, and it\u2019s bracing to see it explored so, well, honestly.\u00a0
A late shift sees the film fully embrace its inner Who\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, shedding laughs for a sadder and deeper commentary on marriage that rings true but feels tonally out of step. But this is a real return\u00a0to form from Wilde, who finds her Booksmart<\/a> groove again after the misstep of Don\u2019t Worry Darling<\/a>. Cue it up and get the neighbours round. Or not.
The Invite had its UK premiere at SXSW London. In US theaters Jun 26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taking a little of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, a sprinkle of Mike Nichols, a toke…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2332,212029,166884,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-625133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-film-comedy","tag-more-recommended","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}