Some people have a hard time watching a movie full of characters they don’t like. It’s often because of their need to have someone to root for. For others it’s a case of needing a ‘good guy’ to connect with. That has rarely been a problem for me. A character’s likability has never been a prerequisite. In fact, there are a ton of great movies about terrible people. At the same time, there’s a big difference in not “liking” the characters and not liking the time you spend with them.

That brings me to “The Invite”, the latest swing from actress and director Olivia Wilde. It’s a movie that locks us in an apartment with two incredibly obnoxious couples. Again, that in itself is hardly a deal-breaker. The problem was being in the company of four people I couldn’t stand spending time with. “The Invite” is 100 minutes of stagey tail-chasing, as we absorb the verbal antics of four pretentious irritants stuck in an endless cycle of incessant bickering, schticky humor, and room-temperature sex talk.

Based on Cesc Gay’s 2020 Spanish film “The People Upstairs”, Wilde’s adaptation has quickly become a darling of many critics and awards season prognosticators. It has gotten some outrageous comparisons to the stage and film classic “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and has been called a lock for multiple Oscar nominations including Best Picture. I wouldn’t be surprised if the latter turns out to be true. But that doesn’t stop “The Invite” from being a repetitive one-note frustration, soaked in cynicism and self-loathing.

Written for the screen by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, the story is a chamber piece about two couples spending an evening in an apartment. Wilde plays Angela, a San Francisco housewife who is married to Joe (Seth Rogen). Angela was an aspiring artist before surrendering to what she considers to be an unfulfilling life as a stay-at-home wife and mother to their daughter Maggie. Joe is a peevish doofus who once played in an indie punk band but is now a miserable associate band teacher at a conservatory.

It’s obvious from the start that Angela and Joe’s marriage is on the rocks. Right as he gets home from work, the couple immediately begin arguing, starting with passive aggressive jabbing that turns into an all-out screaming match. It makes for a long and loud opening fifteen minutes. Joe is especially angry that Angela has invited their upstairs neighbors, Hawk (Edward Norton) and Piña (Penélope Cruz), to their apartment for dinner. The weirdly smitten Angela desperately wants to impress their guests. An annoyed Joe is eager to confront them about the loud raucous sex they have at all hours of the night.

Hawk and Piña are uniquely different yet no less irritating. He is a retired fireFIGHTER (don’t you dare call him a fireMAN) with an obsession for home decor, especially exotic rugs. She is a saucy Spanish psychotherapist and sexologist with no filter and who can whip up a mean flan. Hawk and Piña are portrayed as proudly open and free-spirited. They’re social swingers who are everything Angela and Joe are not. In truth, they function more as shallow plot devices meant to get us to the unearned emotional payoff in the film’s final ten minutes.

“The Invite” fancies itself as having something meaningful to say about marriage, even beginning with a quote from Oscar Wilde that is more pessimistic than insightful. Yet it leaves us with nothing we don’t already know. And sure, Wilde and company grab attention by talking explicitly about sex. Yet they have nothing new to say about the topic. Instead, it all comes off as posturing rather than profound. And no amount of pseudo-sophistication or impromptu wit can give it any kind of weight.

In the cast’s defense, they essentially play their characters as they’re written and directed. If only they were written and directed well. Instead they’re stuck giving slight variations of characters they’ve played before (with the exception of Rogen who is in full copy-and-paste mode). In some ways they too are victims of a movie that turned out to be everything I hoped it wouldn’t be. But fans shouldn’t worry. It’ll still get plenty of accolades this awards season.