‘The Invite’
Directed by Olivia Wilde (R)
★★★
Olivia Wilde’s new comedy drama is “the kind of smart, well-crafted film for adults we are constantly complaining we don’t get enough of,” said Benjamin Lee in The Guardian. Wilde, in her third directorial offering, co-stars as a stay-at-home-mom who, to the consternation of her failed musician husband, Joe, has invited the freewheeling couple upstairs to dinner. With Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penelope Cruz filling out the cast, the charged get-together soon turns into “a night that Edward Albee would approve of,” except that this evening hits peak tension when the guests extend a surprise invitation to join them for a night of group sex.
Perhaps because it’s an adaptation of a 2016 Spanish play that has spawned overseas film versions, The Invite is “an American film that feels vaguely international,” said Matt Zoller Seitz in RogerEbert.com. Though the first half is overdirected to the point of being “irritating,” the showy camerawork fades away as the actors take over, creating a second half that’s “the best work Wilde has yet done as a director.” While all four actors excel, “it’s Rogen who’s the revelation,” said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. “His line readings fill out Joe’s backstory brilliantly, a guy who was always used to being rejected, somehow landed a girl way out of his league 20 years ago, and now is miserable that she doesn’t really want him anymore.” In this movie, relationships change because people change. “To me, that feels true.”
‘Minions & Monsters’
Directed by Pierre Coffin (PG)
★★★
Though they’re “one of the more enduring creations of 21st-century cinema,” the Minions “still get no respect,” said Scott Roxborough in The Hollywood Reporter. Maybe, though, this seventh film in the Despicable Me franchise will finally end a 16-year awards shutout, because it’s a love letter to cinema that argues, between its mile-a-minute gags, that the highest-grossing animated franchise of all time deserves a place in Hollywood’s canon. Minions & Monsters is “very much a film of two halves,” said Drew Taylor in The Wrap. In the first, a quick history tour revisits how bad Minions have been in their quest to find villains to serve, until one group lands in 1920s Hollywood and stumbles into stardom. A flurry of homages to Buster Keaton and other legends follows, until talkies arrive and put the gibberish-spouting Minions out of work.
The second half offers more-conventional Minion action, yet it “builds to an open-hearted tribute to the power of the communal moviegoing experience.” When two of the Minions start work on creating a monster movie using real monsters, this outing “does rather lose momentum,” said Guy Lodge in Variety. But as the film speeds toward a standard save-the-world climax, the latest Minions serves up the usual mayhem “with gusto and a delirious cartoon grin.” It’s “a clear peak for the series: a Minions movie with an actual idea at its core beyond general cheerful chaos.”