Pop Culture Happy Hour - The Invite

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

What happens when a simple dinner party goes off the rails? That’s the premise of The Invite, a very good new comedy directed by Olivia Wilde. Wilde also stars alongside Seth Rogen as a couple who invite their neighbors over for a meal, played by Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton. And it’s a heck of a dinner party, full of frank talk about sex and its complications.If you like slightly absurd relationship comedies, check out these episodes:'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' is a stylish take on spy marriageIn Tina Fey’s ‘The Four Seasons,’ marriage is far from a vacationConnect with Pop Culture Happy Hour:Letterboxd / FacebookOur weekly newsletterSupport Pop Culture Happy Hour+See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Marriage is complicated. It's messy, it's difficult, and sometimes it all blows up just because you want to have a nice dinner party with the neighbors. That's the premise of The Invite, a very good new comedy directed by Olivia Wild. Wilde also stars alongside Seth Rogan, Penelope Cruz, and Edward Norton. And this is a heck of a dinner party full of frank talk about sex and its complications. I'm Aisha Harris. And I'm Linda Holmes. And joining us today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, is Soraya Nadia MacDonald. She's a cultural critic and journalist. Hello, Soraya, and welcome back.

Hello, glad to be here as always. I know. We're so happy to see you. The invite begins with Joe and Angela, a married couple played by Seth Rogan and Olivia Wilde. They have a daughter, but she's at a sleepover. So Angela invites the neighbors, Pina and Hawk, over for dinner. They're played by Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton.

We were at the door before we rang and we could hear you were fighting. Oh, we were talking, we were, um... We were fighting. We were fighting, yeah. A bit of a contentious environment in here, so I understand if that's repellent to you, no hard feelings, you know what I mean? Angela wants to get to know them because she just thinks they're interesting. Joe wants to tell them to stop having such loud and enthusiastic sex in the middle of the night. Hawk and Pina turn out to be absolute chaos agents for Joe and Angela, whose marriage is struggling,

even as Angela's renovating and decorating of their apartment. Makes their physical surroundings more beautiful than ever. That sex life that Pina and Hawk are enjoying does eventually come up as the two couples navigate a long evening of conversation. Wilde directed the film, and the screenplay comes from Rashida Jones and Will McCormick, who adapted a 2020 Spanish film called Sentimental. The invite is in theaters now. All right, so Aisha, I'm going to start with you. What did you think of the invite? Well, my hot take is that the alternate title for this movie could have been,

Who's Afraid of the Invite, Baby? Because it's got sort of like, plenty of people have already compared this to Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? Of course, the Mike Nichols film with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and their relationship is confronted by a much younger couple and all of that stuff. But then this also has the sort of kinetic, very stressful energy of Shiva Baby, the film starring Rachel Sennett from a few years ago that is set during a Shiva and is very intense. All that to say, I really like both of those movies

and I like this movie a lot too. I think that all of these actors are kind of working in a very interesting mode. It's a very claustrophobic film. It mostly, except for the very beginning of the film where we have a short montage over the credit sequence, it takes place in this San Francisco apartment, and it feels clustered, and the energy is there. And it does a really good job of showing this progression of relationships and a relationship that we are being sort of dropped into and where it goes and all of the things that happen. And I think everyone here is great. And so if you like either of those movies I've mentioned, I think you're probably going to appreciate this film. And it's stressful, but also I enjoyed it a lot.

Yeah. Soraya, how about you? What do you think? I also enjoyed it for a few reasons. One, as Aisha says, because it just, You cannot help but be reminded of who's afraid of Virginia Woolf. Also, like, I'm really happy to see Edward Norton in a comic role just making a fool of himself. And then the other thing I think that's really enjoyable about this is I fully admit that I like movies about people's messy relationships and marriages. Yes. And this one is particularly messy. but then it's quite thoughtful as well.

So as much as we are sort of treated to being an audience to these people's dysfunction and maybe feeling smug about the lack of dysfunction in our own lives, it's almost unexpectedly touching. Oh, I think it's quite touching in places. But I think the way that Olivia Wilde directed the script by Rashida and Will, it works really seamlessly. Yeah. And I also think after, I think, a few years of seeing,

sort of dysfunctional marriage movies by men and think I particularly know a bomb back. This one is just kind of a breath of fresh air. Yeah, I really liked this too. I think, you know, so often when you do get a film that really narrows in on a relationship, I feel like right now the way that films are in this particular cultural moment, it'll be, let's look intensely at this marriage and there's a heist. Let's look at this marriage and there's a dead body. Let's look at this marriage and one of them's a superhero or a magic wizard or something like that. This is just a dinner party, right? There is this added element of the sex life that Pina and and Hawk have and the fact that eventually, and I think this part is fair to say,

eventually it comes out that they are into group sex and they're potentially interested in group sex with Angela and Joe. It's really just about the relationships, both of the relationships, because, I mean, I think Hawk is a more broadly comic character, as Soraya said, a more broadly comic character than Peena is. He's sort of oafish, I guess I would say, like he's very awkward and he thinks he's very cool. And I think there's a very interesting interplay between Seth Rogan and Edward Norton about who's cool and who feels cool and who thinks he's cool.

Yeah. Are you an interior design or something? What? Oh, thank you. No. No, he's a fireman. Firefighter, we say. Firefighter.

You're a firefighter. You're not a fire. You weren't a firefighter. Yeah, he was. Fire Captain. You were a fire captain. Captain Hawk? Captain Hawk.

No, you were. I really walked out of this feeling like I really thought it was funny. I thought a lot of the comedy really worked. But I also really admired how emotionally resonant it felt and how invested I was in the relationship between these people. And also the fact that there is a lot of really good cinema. work. I think that Olivia Wilde makes very intentional use of the spaces. Yes. And the way the film is shot, there's not only a lot of use of frames and windows and doorways and things like that, but the entire thing is shot to make this really very large apartment feel very broken up, almost like a clumsy space, which it isn't really. But it's shot to make it feel like a space where you're constantly running into walls and doors and things like that.

And I think a lot of thought went into that. There is a joke in this movie that is 95% a scoring joke, a very funny little bit close to the beginning of the film that's really just about what they did with the score. And I admire those things a lot because it's one thing to say you could put it on as a play. But it's another thing to acknowledge that I think the team that worked on this film found a lot of ways to also use the fact that it's a piece of cinema to advance. the story and to create the mood of the piece. Yeah. We've got a lot more to talk about. We'll be right back after this break.

If you love what you hear on this podcast, you'll love what we're sending out in our newsletter. It's where you'll find deeper dives into some of the shows and films we covered, plus exclusive links and recommendations from our team that you won't get anywhere else. Stay connected to the culture criticism you trust. Sign up at npr.org slash pop culture newsletter. Now back to our conversation about the invite. So, Raya, I want to pick up with you. What are you thinking about? I was going to say, like, so much credit to Dev Hines with this score that just, it almost provides, I think, like, the kind of really sort of declarative framing.

And I think the other thing I noticed with Olivia's attention to detail and how much you can appreciate that coming from, say, like, a heavily stylized work that she did, like, don't worry, darling. and then coming to this and seeing her growth as a filmmaker, right? Because you are. You have sort of all of these constraints that come from the fact that you have like this limited setting. And she just makes a meal of that space. Yeah. I mean, to that point about the way the space is used, but also the way the camera is used, one of the things I noticed and one of the neat little things that I really grasped onto was the way she uses the racking of focus.

I was just going to say focus also, yeah. You'll have one person in the foreground. It's a close-up on them, and we're having this intense moment. And then all of a sudden, we'll just quickly switch back so that the person in the background is more in focus now. And the tonal shift, it also is all aligned with the score, that high score. And those moments, they're a comedic beat, but they're also a very dramatic beat. Like, this is a comedy, but it's also very, very heavily dramatic in many ways. And those little touches just really help keep the pace.

going. It helps keep the momentum going. And I love those little moments. We learned that Joe, Seth Rogen's character, like eventually we learned that this is his family home. Like, he grew up here. He's lived in San Francisco all his life. And I'm so glad they explained that because at first I was like, how are these people? Like, you always wonder how do people afford these places in San Francisco, which is one of the most expensive cities in this country. And just the way that, again, the script with the visuals really kind of lays out who these characters are. Like, I came away from this film really understanding the dynamics of both of these relationships. And I think my favorite aspect of this was Penelope Cruz here because her and Edward Norton have so many great moments where, like, their banter is like, yeah, we can be really friendly and we're really chill.

We're cool. We're hip. And then, like, they'll have these moments where all of a sudden they'll just like, they'll go into their own world where they're both speaking in Spanish. And so Angela and Joe don't understand, but it's like all these little touches are really, really just, again, character building, world's building. And in a tight, like, under two-hour movie, it really, really, like, it just feels very masterful in many ways. Yes. It feels very complete. I agree. You know, I think Penelope Cruz, this role could so easily turn into something of a cliche, like a very sexy woman who sort of wants to invite them into this world of sultry, whatever. And she is very sexy. see and she is all those things. You know, by the end of the movie, you do understand her a lot better than that. And I think you understand her to be a richer character than that.

Unlike him, where I felt like by the end, you understand what a shallow person he is in a lot of ways. The Edward Norton character, Hawk. But really, I think this is my favorite Olivia Wilde performance. I know that woman. I've known that woman. I think she is so good in this as this woman who, I, I genuinely at a bunch of places in this film, I had no idea where she was going to go next, what she was, how she was going to respond to something that happened that was maybe a little bit transgressive at least. I didn't know how she was going to respond to things because they don't set her up to be either a sort of, you know, she's repressed and all she wants is to just have sex with everybody or as somebody who is like a prude, right?

they don't put her in either of those lanes, really. I genuinely didn't know how she was going to react to things. And there were a couple places where she just reacts with delight to something. And I was like, I don't know that I saw that coming for that character. Yeah. One quibble or one sort of thing that I did kind of have to wrap my head around and I'm not sure if it still necessarily feels believable to me. It is this idea that like once this couple Hawken Pina are introduced the option for, or the idea of like maybe we'd like to have group sex with you or just like that they themselves

have group sex to start off with. I live in the Bay and the fact that this is a couple that lives in the Bay, I found it hard to believe that they would be so unaware of certain things that happen within polyamorous couples, even if they themselves are not practicing it, especially the Joe Seth Rogen character who grew up. We know for a fact he grew up in San Francisco. Right. It felt a little kind of like maybe if we were in some.

that's not San Francisco, I could see this being the case. But the efforts to paint them, Joe and Angela, as this like very banella hetero couple, I felt like it stretched the lip. I was like, I don't know if they would be this. Like, I understand them being, like, very surprised. And, like, I love the sort of interactions that they have once they learn that this couple is, is open in that way? But I also was just like, is this really how someone would react, like, who lives in San Francisco? I don't know. I don't know. Because, like, you know, like, I think Things like, like for a really long time, anything kind of outside of that like committed, exclusive, heteronormative, one man, one woman, idea of marriage, like, feels very transgressive

because those sorts of elements, I think, are almost, they're coded as like, queer in a way. I think even in San Francisco. Yes. And you have these two people who live in this very, you know, traditional, looking house. They are kind of boring vanilla straight people. Maybe they don't necessarily want to be, but they don't necessarily know where to start. Yeah.

And that's something that like Pina like picks up on in them, like very clearly. Yeah. Yeah, I think the way you see how Olivia's character is, how she uses her costuming to communicate the way that she is sort of like tied to this space. But the color is also, you know, nothing is very bright. It's a little desaturated and kind of worn in. This is one of the things I really liked about the apartment is that it's luscious, but it also is kind of grim. Yes, yes. I mean, these are middle-aged couples. One of the things that I appreciate about that space is how much it just looks like, oh, this is my friend's parents' house. There's a sentimentality to it. I will say, like the one sticking point I had, like the one thing that sort of kept coming up in the back. of my mind as we're progressing through this film is, I'm like, okay, when does this take place?

I don't even think you necessarily need a smartphone, but I'm like, if you are having a dinner party and you have no alcohol or like one bottle, I'm like, girl, you can't, can we call delivery? Yeah, I mean, she mentions podcast multiple times. And so we know it's the present day. My other big sticking point was like, how do you not ask your guests? Are they a vegetative? Marian or not. Like that is like basic hosting one-on-one. But also like I guess Angela is the way Olivia Wilde plays her. It is so unbelievable that she's just like, she's kind of, I don't know, she's just very high-strung and is very obsessive about details.

And yet she misses the big picture. I think that's like what we get from how she's planned out this entire dinner party. And so because of that little detail, this is where the cruxies. fringe comes in. This is where the stressfulness comes in. Because it's like, I just don't understand how you plan a party and not ask your guests what their dietary restrictions are. I agree with you, but I

suspect that any vegetarian would tell you it doesn't always happen. You know? Well, also, if you're a vegetarian, you would, I would also think that the peanut character would bring that up. Like, on both ends, it's like, you want to tell people I'm sorry. I appreciated that I saw like Esther

Perrell as a consultant on this film, and yet it is written and performed in such a way that it doesn't feel like we're just sitting through a session at a therapist's office. And it doesn't feel like a therapy session, and especially considering that Pina is also a psychotherapist and a sexologist, it made me wonder, you know, yes, this is a movie in which the couple once initiate possibly exploring each other as couples together. But at the end of the day, this is a movie about relationships and a relationship. And I do wonder, you know, how, you know, someone who is actually Polly or in that world would react to kind of like their world sort of

being used as the catalyst for like this very vanilla couple to find themselves. But I think that Esther Perel involvement and also just again, the Pina character becomes so much more than just that. She is someone who acknowledges Angela as a woman and as someone who she can relate to whether or not they have the same background. And I think that that is ultimately the fact that all these characters feel human and we get to that point where we understand what kind of went wrong in both of their relationships at the end of the day. You can see all the ways it could have gone terribly wrong. And I think it avoids almost every way that it could go terribly wrong.

I was going to say even Seth Rogen's character, particularly because we're so used to both seeing him in other films, but also just in his life as a funny stoner. How much humanity and insight is packed into this man and the things that he's dealing with. He's very mean here. This might be the meanest I've ever seen him play a character. He's got range. Yes, I agree. Well, these people are angry at each other, you know?

But I think of all the things, you mentioned the way that it's sort of this poly couple that is maybe the catalyst for a change in the relationship of this monogamous couple. I do think that the movie, out of all the emotions the characters have about things at different times, I don't think there's any point where the movie is really saying, these people are Polly and that is weird or wrong, right? Oh, no, not at all. And I think that's very important. I don't think that's ever really part of the conversation. There's some conversations about, is this for you, what might it do or not do for your relationship? What do you want to do or don't want to do? But there's really not any sort of pointing and giggling at being Polly as something that is, you know, as I said, weird or wrong. And I think that's important to the way the movie was made. Yeah. Yeah, I think we all liked this one. I think I think there's a lot about it that's very interesting. And I do recommend seeing it in a theater. It looks great. It might not seem like the kind of movie that you would prioritize a theatrical viewing, but I really would recommend it. It's a great looking movie. And that brings us to the end of our show. Soraya, Nadia McDonald, Aisha Harris.

Thank you so much for being here to talk about this movie. Thank you. Thank you. This episode is produced by Hufsafothsa Fothamah, Liz Metzger, and Mike Katzoff, and it was edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, come in, provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.