Invited Review – Seth Rogen adds zest and bite to the classic food drama | Video

Here’s a shameless sex play, if JB Priestley wrote a play about swinging. But as well as being embarrassing, it’s fun, funny and, ultimately, incredibly moving.

Mid-life married life goes awry in two families who host a dinner party. A failed singer and his wife, played by Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde (who also directs), add to the invitation of the title to their beautiful neighbors, healers and firefighters played by Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton. Rogen is the first among his equals in this group, a wonderful outsider-turned-outer constantly interrupting the increasingly absurd by knowing criminals or crying out in a strange rage, and using it without hesitation. come, come! laughing.

Screenwriters Will McCormack and Rashida Jones clearly enjoy setting up Rogen’s every punch, and without Rogen being able to breathe life into the film, the action would have felt contrived and contrived. Adapted from a Spanish film, The People Upstairs directed by Cesc Gayitself originally a drama (and there has already been a Korean remake of the original film).

Rogen is Joe, a guy who used to be in a band called Onslaught, and now he’s settled down to teach music at a small technical college and lives in his late parents’ house. He suffers from depression and psychosomatic bad back, although the 12-year-old daughter of the couple (without a camera) is the only light in his life. Angela (Wilde) has organized a casual soiree for their high-class neighbors Piña (Cruz) and Hawk (Norton), to anger Joe. Angela’s apparent intention is to apologize for the noise she and Joe made during the recent renovation – but Joe, in his passagg way, now wants to call Piña and Hawk to apologize themselves for keeping him awake with their quiet and careless sex.

It’s a sex story that’s about discussing aspects you don’t expect. Cruz and Norton delightfully portray Piña and Hawk as dangerous, effortlessly bohemian and progressive; they have an intolerable habit of reverting to Spanish in the presence of their hosts, a habit which is rude, but which always makes them appear both genial and romantic. Where Piña and Hawk are stoic and self-confident, poor Angela and Joe are sweaty and stoic, depressed and frustrated with their feelings. The show is set for a fierce cultural debate. However, that is not what actually happens.

In some ways this is a loud, suspenseful, addictive movie; it takes a while to settle in, and in fact it begins by having almost every line of dialogue overheard by the music – an oppressive quality that luckily doesn’t last very long. It’s wide-ranging, structured and structured, and the emotional twists are like a gym for sudden action – yet Rogen’s comedic sensibilities mean the pure depravity of the twists and turns is on the wall.

The invitation is the same Roman Polanski’s four-hander Carnage from 2011adapted from Yasmina Reza’s play – or literally Francis Veber’s play and film Le Dîner de Consmodified as Dinner Schmucks with Steve Carell. Maybe there’s something about bourgeois people being embarrassed at dinner that has an export interest. The call is hilarious … and Rogen is at the top of his game.