Screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will McCormack are riding a fresh wave of praise thanks to The Invite, Olivia Wilde’s sharp, bruisingly funny couples dramedy that premiered at Sundance to raves for its honest take on long-term relationships. Their script digs into everything from fertility and perimenopause to resentment and middle-aged disappointment without ever slipping into cliché

Built on what Jones calls their shared “internal cheese meter” that keeps every conversation feeling painfully real rather than sitcom neat. Now, the duo behind Celeste and Jesse Forever and The Invite has an idea so delightfully absurd it almost sounds like sacrilige.

Reimagining Tom and Jerry as a full-blown romantic comedy.

In Rashida Jones and Will McCormack version, Tom and Jerry are not just gag machines; they are the emotional engine of a love story. Rather than treating the chaos between them as random violence, Jones and McCormack see it as a metaphor for desperate, misdirected longing. 

“It’s a rom-com in the style of ‘La La Land.’ Why are these characters fighting so much? Because they want to be seen, and they want to be loved. The logline of our film is literally ‘Love is worth fighting for.’” McCormack explained to Variety . 

Turning the classic slapstick rivalry into a sabotage campaign aimed at blowing up their humans’ relationship, too. Speaking to Variety, they described the feud mirrors the same themes they explored in The Invite. It is about connection, insecurity, and the ways people sabotage what they cannot clearly express.  

The writers framed the animated pitch as another relationship story at heart. Only this time, the couples therapy unfolds through cartoon chaos, with a cat and mouse dragging their humans into the emotional crossfire.

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But that same emotional chaos is already playing out in a far more grounded setting in their latest film.

Olivia Wilde’s The Invite is a tightly wound, one-night pressure cooker about two couples, one failing and one seemingly thriving, trapped together at a dinner party that goes off the rails. Angela and Joe are a long-married San Francisco couple whose relationship has shifted from warmth into constant friction. With their teenage daughter away, Angela sees an evening dinner with their charismatic neighbors as a possible reset.

Those neighbors bring a completely different energy into the room. Pina, a confident s** therapist, and Hawk, a laid-back retired firefighter, appear unburdened by the same anxieties. Their openness about relationships, aging, and intimacy slowly destabilizes Angela and Joe’s already fragile dynamic.

Early reactions have praised the film’s ability to balance humor with emotional weight. Critics have highlighted how the confined setting never feels restrictive, allowing the performances to remain unpredictable and alive. At its core, The Invite and their Tom and Jerry pitch share the same DNA. Both stories examine how love can turn messy, reactive, and even destructive when communication breaks down. One just happens to involve a dinner table, while the other plays out through cartoon mayhem.

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What do you think about this unexpected Tom and Jerry rom-com twist? Let us know in the comments.