Any resemblance between The Invite and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is not coincidental. From a screenplay written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones and directed by and starring Olivia Wilde as Martha surrogate Angela, it is almost entirely set in her and Joe’s (Seth Rogen) San Francisco apartment.  One night, Joe returns from his job as a music teacher to learn that Angela has invited a neighboring couple, Pína (Penelope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton) over to dinner within the next hour. Their bickering-cum-full-out-arguing hits a wild crescendo just as the doorbell rings announcing Pína and Hawk’s arrival.

While it roughly follows the trajectory of Mike Nichols’ classic film of the Edward Albee play, this is not a remake of it (actually, it’s a remake of the Spanish film The People Upstairs.) For one thing, despite the earlier film’s gallows humor, The Invite is unashamedly hilarious (the words “screwball cringe” came to mind early on) with its rat-a-tat-tat dialogue, one-liners and sight gags (Rogen struggling to bike up the city’s infamously hilly streets is a highlight of the latter.) It’s not long before sex-therapist Pína and ex-firefighter Hawk feel like near-kindred spirits to Angela and Joe, especially in their own neuroses. All four actors are a delight to watch with a reminder of still-otherworldly Cruz’s often obscured talent for comedy.

As the night lingers on, events become more outrageous before the film pulls back for pathos and some catharsis. The shifting tone is handled elegantly even as it slows the built-up momentum to a crawl. As for Wilde, this makes the misguided Don’t Worry Darling feel like an aberration in her filmmaking career. While more fun than profound, The Invite is worth sitting through to arrive at an affecting if ambiguous détente of a conclusion between two of its four characters.