Her name is prophetic. It’s been, well a wild ride with Olivia Wilde. After incredible highs like Drinking Buddies, House, Booksmart, we fell down the Don’t Worry Darling fiasco. But she picked herself up, and eventually found her way back in the directing saddle for The Invite. And we’re back on the upswing again! With emphasis on the “swing” for sure.
Director Olivia cast herself as Angela, a San Francisco based housewife with a penchant for interior decorating. She’s married to Joe (Seth Rogen), a former musician who never made it, now teaching band at a mediocre high school. It’s not been the finest hour for either, stuck in a rut of a midlife. This particular evening, Joe returns home from his arduous bike ride to find a frazzled Angela putting out a jamon charcuterie board absent their daughter, sleeping over at a friends. Turns out, Angela invited over the upstairs couple Pina (Penelope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton) to try to make new friends, although Joe might also use the neighbors date to bring up the Earth shattering upstairs love making going on wee hours into the morning.
What we learn maybe from The Invite is that Olivia Wilde, director, is an enhancer. If the script is good, Wilde will make it better; if it’s crap, we’re in Razzie territory. Ergo, she took her time picking her latest script. Always good to trust Rashida Jones and her sense of humor. What Jones wrote is supercharged: it’s a bolt of lightning of churn and burn dialogue, with only brief respites before we have to turn it up again, revealing hard hitting truths when the dialogue finds the perfect endpoint. But…it’s basically 4 people in an apartment with basically two important rooms. How does Olivia enhance that? First, she makes those two rooms just a beautiful representation of each of the two leads: Angela’s living room is awash in taste, but bought on the cheap cause she doesn’t trust her artistic instincts anymore to justify the monetary purchases. Joe’s office is a mess: a classic example of hoarding to bury and suffocate under your own self-pity. But the big contribution director Wilde brings to the table is vision. She sees this like Faces meets Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. As such, there’s a 70s style feel to the setup, with wonderful throwback credits to get us in the right mood and headspace for our movie to deliver properly. From there, she has 4 actors, one or two talking, the others reacting. The Invite’s bread & butter is Wilde’s framing of two people in a shot together, one prominent, one backset. This darts your eyes back and forth to try to catch it all at once, necessary to keep the energy frantic and exciting when all 4 are together. Then she slows it down when the emotional beats have to hit, giving us zoom in shots of whatever character is learning the lesson in the scene. Then back to a group, repeat.
Helping Olivia Wilde out first and foremost is her casting choices. Seth Rogen’s a no brainer: the funniest likable movie star on the planet, just more angry and jaded than usual. There’s a meanness to everything Rogen says here, brushing up against our history with the guy. So who’ll play Seth’s wife? In steps Wilde herself, the enhancer! I had my doubts about her going laugh for laugh with comedy incarnate, but that’s what the enhancer does! Some of my favorite stuff here is our Wildecarde clap backs and anxiety monologues, but especially her reaction game, just hilariously over the top and insecurely performative. With the motormouthing in the main apartment, Wilde brings in the opposite energy for the opposite couple. Edward Norton is having a ball here, just being the “everybody love everybody” vibe guy. That leaves him a blank, sexy slate for everyone to project their problems onto, where he just washes them away like the fires he puts out (of course he’s a firefighter); except, obviously, for Joe, where Seth Rogen gets madder and madder as Norton gets calmer and quieter. And then there’s Penelope Cruz. She’s the adult in this room, completely self assured, both physically and emotionally. That means everyone in the room is drawn to her, elevating the temperature and making each scene really pop the minute she says something new and exciting. The quad together are a match made in movie heaven, bouncing off each other electrically to the point I was just cackling in my seat more than any other film I’ve seen this year.
The Invite is a wonderful reminder to know when the end is near, and when it isn’t. We’re definitely far away from The Enhancer Olivia’s Wilde’s end, I just hope she’s as careful picking scripts as she was with this one in the future. Finally, it’s most important reminder is never to be friends with your upstairs neighbors…and to not assume every Spanish person like jamon charcuterie boards.