Olivia Wilde's 'The Invite' Survives Sundance, a Bidding War, and Her Own Reputation. It's the Best Thing She's Made.

Olivia Wilde's last movie as a director, "Don't Worry Darling," is remembered less for anything on screen than for the circus around it: the feud rumors, the salad dressing, the spitting that may or may not have happened. The safe bet was that her directing career was finished as a serious thing. "The Invite," which A24 puts in limited theaters today, is the rebuttal. It is the best-reviewed work she has ever been near, and the reviews are not being polite about it.

The movie ran the Sundance gauntlet in January and came out the other side with a standing ovation and a bidding war. A24 won the film after offers climbed past $12 million, beating Focus Features and a late lunge from Warner Bros.' new specialty label. That is a lot of money for a comedy that takes place almost entirely in one apartment and stars four people talking. The talking, it turns out, is the point.

The setup

Joe (Seth Rogen) is a former indie-rock guy with one minor hit in the rearview, now teaching at a music conservatory he considers beneath the career he thought he'd have. Angela (Wilde) went to art school and never did much with it except furnish the San Francisco apartment Joe inherited from his parents, a fact that quietly eats at him. They have a 12-year-old daughter who is conveniently at a sleepover, and they have the upstairs neighbors coming for dinner.

Before the guests arrive, Joe and Angela bicker. About whether she told him about the dinner. About him eating a pickle off her plate. About a rug, a fold-up bike, a missing bottle of wine. None of it matters and all of it matters, because this is how these two stay connected now: friction as a love language.

Then the neighbors show up, and they are everything Joe and Angela are not. Pína (Penélope Cruz) is a Spanish psychotherapist and sexologist. Hawk (Edward Norton) is a retired firefighter who carries himself like a West Coast guru. They are calm, glamorous, and loud in bed, loud enough that it has already been a point of marital negotiation downstairs. Over dinner, the neighbors reveal why, and then they extend the actual invite of the title. It is not a spoiler that this is a movie about two couples and what happens when one of them suggests the four of them stop being just neighbors. The premise is right there in the marketing.

Why it works

What every critic keeps reaching for is the same comparison, and it is a flattering one. Owen Gleiberman in Variety called it "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" remade by the Woody Allen of "Husbands and Wives," and TheWrap's Adam Chitwood landed in the same neighborhood, calling it the "great-great-grandchild" of the Albee adaptation. That lineage tells you the register: a chamber piece where the laughs and the wounds come from the same place, and the comedy keeps getting more honest the longer the night goes.

Wilde the director is the surprise. The film could have coasted on dialogue, but the reviews single out how she shoots a single location so it feels lived-in rather than stagey, an apartment with a history. Wilde the actor is the other surprise. Gleiberman described her Angela as "a blur that gradually comes into beautiful focus," which is a generous line for a director reviewing her own work, except by the consensus around her she earned it. Rogen, working his usual crusty-rationalist persona, is reportedly digging deeper into it than he ever has. Norton gets a monologue that flips Hawk from a punchline into something you sit still for. Cruz, the one who lights the fuse, plays Pína as an erotic provocateur with her own quiet agenda.

It helps that the people behind the camera are not amateurs. Devonté Hynes (Blood Orange) wrote the score. Yorgos Mavropsaridis, the editor who cuts Yorgos Lanthimos's films, cut this one. The whole thing was shot in 23 days, in chronological order, which is part of why the slow-building tension feels earned rather than assembled. And the film is dedicated to Diane Keaton, which, for a movie this attuned to neurotic adults talking themselves in circles, is the right patron saint.

Where it wobbles

Not everyone is sold, and the dissent is worth hearing. Bilge Ebiri at Vulture found the emotional turns unearned and openly disliked the score, arguing the movie "could have benefited from more control." Tim Grierson at Screen International called it "uneven" even while crediting it with something fresh to say. The recurring note, even from fans, is that the third act stumbles a little, that the script (by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones) is sharper at setting the table than clearing it. IndieWire's Kate Erbland flagged exactly that and still landed on a B+, which is roughly where the consensus sits: a movie that is so good in the middle that you forgive the landing.

The numbers back the warmth. It is sitting at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 76 on Metacritic, the latter of which translates to "generally favorable" and, for a talky adult comedy with no IP behind it, basically a miracle in 2026.

The verdict

"The Invite" is the rare grown-up comedy that treats sex and marriage as genuinely complicated and still remembers to be funny about it. It does not flinch from the awkwardness of its premise and it does not turn the premise into a smirk. The third act is the weak link, and the score will divide people, but the ninety-odd minutes of four adults circling each other in a too-warm apartment are as alive as anything in theaters right now. If you have spent the summer drowning in capes and toys, this is the antidote, and it is the movie that gives Olivia Wilde her career back.

It is in limited release now and expands in July. See it with someone you are willing to argue with on the drive home.

BCN Score: 8/10