You’re Cordially Invited' could have benefitted from tightening up the script and raising the absurd stakes of the premise, but Ferrell and Witherspoon are both firing on all cylinders to provide plenty of laughs.

The most surprising thing about this by-the-numbers comedy, in fact, is that it comes to us from writer-director Nicholas Stoller. He updated Kermit & Co. so delightfully in “The Muppets,” tartly reconceived the revenge rom-com with “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” and scored on the small screen with both “Platonic” and the updated “Goosebumps.”