Sometimes the fun of a high concept can get in the way of things. One Night Only presents a world where premarital sex has been banned except for one night a year. To put it more astutely, “what if The Purge, but with sex?” Director Will Gluck, who had a heavy hand in rewriting this original screenplay by Travis Braun, certainly wanted to deliver a screwball-like rom-com placing two innocents in the middle of a chaotic night where they keep running into each other. The results are a bit more mixed. Never quite settling on how raunchy it wants to be, the film sidesteps both large and small implications of this world in favor of a fairly rote story involving two very attractive people that would never be caught in the dilemma this film puts them in. But hey, there has to be some kind of tension, and at least these two have chemistry. Just try not to ask too many questions.
As stated, this story is set three years after the passing of a mandate that outlawed sex between singles. How a government composed largely of men would ever go through with this sort of regulation is beyond me. There are other details outright explained, implied, or shown through visual aids to help justify this goofy premise (and explain how aggressively hetero this film is). Still, the movie very much wants us to focus on two people who have had a rough go of it since this mandate had passed, despite looking like Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner. Barbaro is Allie, a commercial singer who wants a real connection instead of just anonymous sex. Turner is Owen, a pizza shop owner whose girlfriend decides they should sleep with other people (just as he was about to propose).
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With our two leads now ostensibly alone, we watch a film throw 12 hours of obstacles in their way before the inevitable occurs. Or maybe it doesn’t. Perhaps this film has some subversion on the way to really hammer home some message regarding the role of sex in relationships or what other kinds of chaos the government can cause through unwanted regulations. Whatever the case may be, yes, much of this movie revolves around how Allie and Owen keep running into each other throughout the night, as if the universe was dead set on pairing them together. But are these interactions fun?
Movies like this rely on chemistry to work. That should be a given if audiences have been handed a major studio film that had to have gone through all the work to bring these specific actors together. Does that mean Barbaro and Turner don’t deserve credit? No, they, if anything, are what hold this movie together as best they can. Between their banter, physical comedy choices, and willingness to be as unclothed as they’ve contractually agreed to at different points in the movie, there’s a clear effort to have the movie rest as much as it can on the idea that these are funny, sexy people that we want to see end up together.
Problems arise when trying to justify all of the comedic antics around them. As the premise is already ridiculous, one must also expect pretty much every other character in this film to rarely act like anything remotely resembling a human being. Instead, we have best friends, roommates, parents, randos, and authority figures all speaking like the varying results of a team of writers doing punch-ups to get in some zingers. Some of the performers make it work more naturally or successfully humorously than others (Molly Ringwald and LeVar Burton, of all people, are true highlights). However, many others either fall flat or feel more like an attempt to get a rise out of the audience due to their mere appearances (seriously, this film often felt like it had more cameos than laughs).
Other antics involve the quest of both leads to find a condom, as all sex on this one night must be protected, and attempts to get into an exclusive party. There’s some fun to be had in these bits, but even at just over 100 minutes, this feels like a movie that needed fewer obstacles. Given that there’s more overall sweetness in this film than what a premise like this implies, it again speaks to a lack of confidence in what the overall best balance needed to be. Obviously, One Night Only is likable, and bound to be largely praised by its fans for that reason, but a movie can only get so much mileage out of this.
Ultimately, it feels like being positive on this movie requires one to feel good enough about Barbaro and Turner’s performances not to care about its many other issues. Whether it’s subplots that don’t really go anywhere, the strains to get some laughs out of certain scenarios, or finding more fun in the premise as opposed to leaning in and discovering the many questions some will have about the logic of this mandate. Being overly plotted didn’t help the movie for me, and an intimate pizza-making scene didn’t exactly work to help seduce me in this film’s favor either. So, even while many in this film get some, I guess one watch only is about enough for me here.
One Night Only opens in theaters on August 7, 2026.
