There are worse things than doing a rom-com version of The Purge. Heck, they did a lowbrow comedy version of it with The Binge (where drinking was legal for just one day) a couple of years ago, and that was pretty terrible. If your idea is to only make sex legal to have once per year, as is the case with Will Gluck’s One Night Only, the best way is to have it be like sex itself. Don’t think about it too much; and if it’s messy then you’re doing something right. Unfortunately, this plucky but exhausting extended “meet cute” takes all of the joy out of sex despite its charming leads, Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner.
Barbaro and Turner’s chemistry is through the roof, and if you can shut out all of the nonsense around them…damn, they’re electric together! Unfortunately, the movie is constantly reminding you just how ridiculous the conceit actually is. Basically, a the government, obviously an extremist right-wing administration like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale, has decreed that sex between unmarried people is legal for just one day each year. There’s a lot of complicated crap about a company that literally brands every human in the country with a tag that rats you out if you’re about to get laid. If this were real, it’d be chaos, dystopia, warfare on the streets. But here, people just kind of accept it. There are a few rebels, but they are portrayed as villains or punchlines rather than as commentary.
The screenplay by Travis Braun simultaneously goes too far into the details, while also not being particularly well thought-out. Either way, it’s a distraction when we should be paying attention to Barbaro and Turner’s magnetism, which is considerable.
Barbaro stars as Allie, a New Yorker with a lovely enough singing voice for humiliating TV ads. Turner is Owen, owner of a pizza restaurant that serves the best pies in the city. Both are hopeless romantics, and when the mandate is lifted, they don’t want just a quick roll in the hay. They want to find the real thing, or something close to it. Making matters worse is that Owen’s girlfriend (Maya Hawke) has decided she wants to sleep with another guy in their apartment…a guy who looks shockingly like Gluck’s Anything But You star, Glen Powell. Keep your eyes peeled for a funny cameo by Powell’s co-star, Sydney Sweeney, as well. The cameos in this movie are pretty great, including rom-com legend Ally Sheedy as Owen’s mom, and Levar Burton as her lover.
Allie and Owen keep crossing paths throughout the night, showing flashes of “Are they The One?” energy. But for the msot part, they are merely chummy with one another, bordering on antagonistic at other times. They are usually trying to sleep with other people, constantly missing the perfect someone right in front of their faces. Classic rom-com tropes, but with a clever twist. Again, One Night Only has a good idea, just executed poorly. Its characters don’t seem genuinely affected by this crazy twist in the way the world works; they’re like visitors from rom-com land dropped into it to act exactly the same way.
For stretches, it’s possible to turn your brain off and not think about the things that are wrong with One Night Only. Allie and Owen’s relationship builds as they keep bumping into one another through the evening, sharing embarrassing war stories, gathering trust in one another. Sure, they usually end up ditching the other to try and bang another potential partner, but they always find their way back together and it’s sweet every time they do. They share a slice of pizza, of course they do, and he gets to hear her sing. The basic formula stuff just works.
Like the recent rom-com Eternity, a simiarly high-concept, nifty premise, and with Callum Turner, One Night Only‘s best gags are in the fleshing out of this ridiculous alternate reality. Pete Davidon and Bobby Cannavale shooting a terrible cop thriller on this night because the streets will be empty (that’s not actually true; horny New Yorkers are EVERYWHERE gettin’ it on), a shop owner upcharging on the last condom available because duh, the insane amount of KY jelly product placement, and dating apps becoming more skeevy than ever.
Then One Night Only practically begs you to overthink it, by having one character blame Obama for this ridiculous anti-sex mandate because he swung the ideological pendulum too far. How does all of this affect the LGBTQ community? Other than Allie’s roommate (played by Quintessa Swindell in a throw away role), they are hardly even a consideration. And where do sex workers fit into all of this? Surely there’s like an underground network operating somewhere, right? Like alcohol during Prohibition? Maybe, but the only one we see is a thief who uses the evening to entrap men and rob them blind. Eh.
Through it all, I was willing to give One Night Only a thumbs up until the last five minutes. It’s been a shockingly sex-free film, because Allie and Owen, ultimately, are about fighting against the mandate, or so they say. But they aren’t fighting it at all. By doing exactly what the mandate calls for, following its rules to the tee, they are embracing it. They might be doing it in the name of love, but sex is part of that equation, too. And if you aren’t willing to fight for love, you don’t deserve to have it.
One Night Only opens in theaters August 7th.
