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“The Invite” already seemed dated when its trailer arrived in April. Another attempt to make consensual non-monogamy feel provocatively of the moment, though that moment seems to have passed a while back. (“Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” was fifty-seven years ago.)

Which is not to say that a movie about wife-swapping couldn’t be interesting, funny or titillating. Just that from the tone of the trailer, I wasn’t getting my hopes up.

The premise, spelled out in huge neon letters, is that one couple (Edward Norton and Penélope Cruz) invites another couple (Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde) to have sex with them. And the potential comedy stems from the somewhat schlubby Seth Rogen becoming positively giddy at the prospect of sleeping with Penélope Cruz.

The trailer tries hard to present itself as dangerous and naughty. But this is Hollywood, after all, which wouldn’t know naughty if someone sat on its face. As with most studio films that tease us with transgression, you pretty much know going in that it’ll be about as scandalous as a Sunday picnic.

And so it is. There’s some borderline cringe material once the swap actually begins, eighty minutes in, but the stakes have been set so low there’s never any fear of real consequences. For a movie built around planned infidelity, “The Invite” proves remarkably dull.

So what is “The Invite” about, exactly?

Sex gets talked about a lot, but rarely in a way that deepens our understanding of these people or brings any specificity of personal experience to the table. Instead, the movie approaches the subject with the adolescent giddiness of someone stumbling across their first dirty magazine. The “Gee whiz, I’m gonna get to bang who!?” quality of Rogen’s performance has its charms, but they’re small potatoes.

Wilde (who also directed the film) is more problematic. She never quite connects with either her character or Rogen, and her motives regarding sex remain difficult to pin down. She mostly goes along with whatever the screenplay serves up without giving us much sense of what it means to her character — or whether it means anything at all.

And that would be fine, too. Movies don’t have to mean something. A comedy can simply be funny, and that’s enough.

Only “The Invite” isn’t funny. At all.

Though it’s presented as a rollicking knee-slapper, the laughs simply aren’t there. Even when the script manages something clever, the humor gets beaten out of it through a combination of directorial overthinking, presentational acting, and a soundtrack that serves roughly the same purpose as circus music — with about as much subtlety.

About that music.

Alec Fellman is not a name I knew before seeing “The Invite,” but I spent much of the running time wanting to strangle him with my bare hands. To be fair, it isn't really his fault. He's simply the solo cellist responsible for ninety percent of the torturous soundtrack Devonté Hynes has composed for the film.

But I can't entirely blame Hynes either, since director Wilde presumably signed off on the very strange, very bad idea of using a cello — and ONLY a cello — to provide a wall-to-wall soundscape of bouncy, whimsical, relentlessly telegraphic music, full of forced jollity and all the subtlety of a slide whistle. Or a rim shot.

In fact, the soundtrack is essentially one long rim shot, announcing that something funny is about to happen, is happening, or has just happened. The cues are so loud and persistent that they swamp not only the dialogue and performances, but eventually the movie itself.

Then, after fifteen minutes, when I was ready to throw in the towel, the music suddenly stopped and I was overwhelmed by that feeling of relief you get when the novocaine finally kicks in. Perhaps now we'd be allowed to hear the dialogue and become involved in the performances. Fat chance.

With the music no longer reminding us to “laugh” every five seconds, the editing picks up the mantle. Quick, erratic jump cuts emphasize the rapid-fire, ping-pong rhythm of the dialogue. All we really want is to hear what Wilde and Rogen are saying so we can become invested, but we're denied even that. Wilde seems to think that if we forget for one second her movie is supposed to be screamingly funny, we'll lose interest. Or, God forbid, have an unassisted thought.

“The Invite” is based on the Spanish play “Los Vecinos de Arriba,” or “The Neighbors Upstairs,” by Catalan filmmaker Cesc Gay, and its stage roots show most clearly when Rogen and Wilde are onscreen. They play a miserable married couple with that annoying sitcom habit of fighting about literally everything. And their performances are similarly broad, heightened beyond realism into a presentational style that seems to be listening for — and responding to — a studio audience.

Both actors have been good, even great, in the past. Rogen has a natural sheepishness that usually translates into an appealing everyman quality. And Wilde, at her best, can convey complicated thoughts with remarkable simplicity.

But in “The Invite,” they seem interested only in the surface of their characters, overplaying every irritation and punchline while revealing almost nothing about the marriage underneath.

Luckily, the moment Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton arrive as the neighbors upstairs — a sexually adventurous couple who try to shake Rogen and Wilde from their marital torpor — things suddenly get real, although the incongruity of the acting styles (one couple in a sitcom, the other in an HBO prestige dramedy) continues to bedevil the film’s tone.

Norton is especially good as a people-pleaser who charmingly refuses to let anyone get under his skin. The structure demands that Rogen meet nearly every suggestion Norton makes with skepticism and pushback, but instead of taking the bait, Norton approaches each conflict as an opportunity to dig deeper into his character’s humanity. He’s rarely been more appealing or vulnerable onscreen, and his monologue about how his character got the nickname “Hawk” is the film’s high point.

Cruz is equally good, bringing her trademark warmth and intelligence to the table. At one point she assumes the role of marriage counselor and, through the sheer clarity and honesty of her performance, somehow makes even the simplistic material between Rogen and Wilde land. Mostly, anyway.

At other times, not even Cruz and Norton, pulling with all their considerable might, can drag the movie out of the ditch it’s driven itself into.

Which makes it all the stranger when “The Invite” suddenly reaches for genuine emotional depth in its final moments. They’re wordless, yet we understand everything. For once, nothing is underlined. There’s no invasive cello or self-conscious jump cut telling us how to feel. Wilde simply lets the moment play and trusts us to respond without being coached. And, remarkably, it works.

It’s as if the movie has grown a new head. Unfortunately, it arrives about a hundred minutes too late.

Ultimately, the lack of trust — in the actors, the material, and especially the audience — is what keeps “The Invite” from becoming the bracingly grown-up movie it could have been. Wilde has assembled four talented actors around a premise built for comic disaster, then spends most of the movie protecting everyone — characters and audience alike — from anything genuinely dangerous.

It’s a movie about letting go made by people who refuse to loosen their grip.

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