An awkward dinner party is hell in real life, but this sharp, funny and chaotic chamber piece mines it for comedy gold and emotional insight.
I watched His Girl Friday for the first time recently, and after Cary Grant’s screwball classic was over I wondered whatever happened to romantic comedies with witty rapid-fire dialogue that you would just drink up like a fizzy Coca-Cola. Olivia Wilde’s third directorial effort may not be very romantic, but its whip-smart dialogue is one of the reasons I had such a blast with it at the cinema. It’s a kind of comedy I’d love to re-watch just to catch and absorb all the zingers that fly past like ping-pong balls.
Our party hosts are Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Olivia Wilde), once madly in love, now trapped in an unhappy frazzled marriage. Angela is a bundle of nerves, tightly wound and full of manic energy. Joe is an unfulfilled music teacher who is touchy about his failed music career in a band that can hardly be even called a one-hit wonder. He resents most things in his life, including his bad back, the fact that Angela doesn’t work, and that they live in his parents’ beautifully designed San Francisco apartment.
To add to Joe’s long list of grievances, he’s crabby over the dinner party Angela is putting together for their cool, bohemian and progressive neighbours upstairs, Hawk (Edward Norton) and Pína (Penélope Cruz). Angela is desperately eager to impress, and she definitely doesn’t want Joe to raise a complaint about the loud noises coming from Hawk and Pína’s at night. Little do they know that their sexually freewheeling neighbours have an invitation of their own in mind.
The initial stretch just before the party, with Joe and Angela going at each other like angry cats, hissing and sniping and belittling each other mercilessly, was when I wondered for a moment if I was going to like the movie, or if I’d want to escape this party via a fire exit. The scene is simply too long and exhausting, overly punctuated with intrusive cello score that was beginning to get on my nerves. To my relief, the screeching strings retreat soon after and the film settles down into a more comfortable groove, with no further missteps all the way to the affecting finale.
The party is as much of an entertaining car wreck as you’d not-so-secretly hope for. Joe and Angela try and fail to conceal their resentment and bitterness, with Hawk and Pína’s adventurous relationship exposing the reality of their arid marriage. The dialogue-heavy scenes sizzle with tension and intrigue; there’s an impressive choreography to the way characters bounce off each other, trading insults and quips, interrupting and making side comments (Rogen’s character takes the lion’s share of the latter as a resident cynic). As the night goes on and the party morphs into something more serious and sad, Wilde handles the tonal shift impeccably. I haven’t seen her first two films, including the much-maligned Don’t Worry Darling, but she clearly has talent as a filmmaker.
A great cast doesn’t always make for a great movie, but here all four leads fire on all cylinders. I pretty much expected excellence from Norton and Cruz, however it’s the other couple who surprised me the most. As a comedian, Seth Rogen has always been hit-and-miss for me; here he is absolutely hilarious, and his performance made me feel a tad guilty for always underrating his dramatic chops. Going by Olivia Wilde’s nervy, anxiety-ridden yet sympathetic Angela, she’s becoming an infinitely more interesting actress with age, and the small scene where she dumps her failed soufflé into a rubbish bin is one of my favourite moments of physical comedy this year.
The Invite is proof that a smart, well-crafted mid-budget film for adults is not yet extinct, and that a comedy is still best experienced in a movie theatre with other people.
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