One Night Only: Why you should walk out of this so-called sex comedy before its dumb ending
One Night Only has a wild - and dystopian - premise for a frothy rom-com, but for something billed as a sex comedy, it is surprisingly not horny. The ending, in particular, is something to be avoided.
When a movie is asking you to actively resist its high-concept premise and just go along with it, you’re already on the backfoot. That’s a lot of extra mental peddling you’re doing to try and suspend disbelief.
The only way One Night Only works is if you don’t think about its premise too much, otherwise you’ll get bogged down in a deluge of distracting plot holes and questions.
The film is set in an alternate reality in which the US has for the past three years outlawed pre-marital sex, except for one 12-hour evening each year. It’s The Purge but for hanky panky.
Sign up to The Nightly's newsletters.
Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.
By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.During this night, all singles and unmarried couples turn their cities into an amorous, horny urban jungle, where lame pick-up lines have surprising success, and condoms are the most prized commodity.
The bonk ban became law thanks to a conservative US government and without the consent of its people, and embodied by a politician on TV who has a suspicious resemblance to J.D. Vance.
It’s policed by these biometric tattoos that are supposed to measure your dopamine and hormone responses as well as your proximity to another person also with elevated levels.
That’s what you have to accept and get over without thinking too much about, oh, for example, where are all the LGBTQI people (one throwaway line doesn’t actually explain much).
The central would-be couple is Allie (Monica Barbaro), a jingle singer looking for something deeper, and Owen (Callum Turner), a pizza shop owner whose girlfriend (Maya Hawke) tells him that on this night, she wants to hook up with the hot dude in their building, and that he too should go off and have an adventure.
Allie and Owen have an inauspicious start when he voms his sushi omakase dinner in front of her, but over the night, the universe keeps pushing them together even as they try to pursue other potential sexual partners.
If you manage to just lean into the rom-com aspect, there are some satisfying parts to this movie. For one thing, Barbaro is dazzling, and her character feels like a real person. She has such an attractive warmth and energy, and mostly has decent chemistry with Turner.
It’s also laugh-out-loud funny at times, running straight into opportunities for physical comedy that it largely pulls off. You have to give One Night Only credit for at least going there. And New York looks great on film.
But it is really hard to separate it from its context, especially as it constantly reminds you about its premise.
It comes up all the time, including the visual gags of real-life brands (such as Duolingo, Red Bull, Equinox, KY Jelly) that have capitalised on this 12-hour sex spree through its marketing.
It’s possible those brands just gave their permission to the production to have a little punny fun, but it’s just as likely they might have even paid for that product placement.
If One Night Only was making pointed commentary about the moral failings of corporations who leverage a dystopian and authoritarian piece of legislation for the sake of selling stuff, it has no bite. It’s played for laughs, and that feels gross.
And you should absolutely leave the cinema about eight minutes from the end to save yourself the anguish of its truly hare-brained resolution (no offence to bunnies) because if you were on the fence about the film, that denouement will push you into a place of exasperation and rage.
For something that’s billed as a sex comedy, it seems to actively judge sex and those who have it.
Despite its frothy marketing, One Night Only is a socially regressive film that could serve as a campaign video for puritanical groups. Vance and his ilk from the pro-abstinence right would actually approve One Night Only’s ultimate message.
It tried to say something about its premise and the resurgence of the authoritarian right trying to police people’s bodies – there are references to a repeal movement, but it gets muddled in its own antiquated ideas about “worthy” sex and romance.
Having said all that, at least it’s better than director Will Gluck’s previous effort, the soulless Anyone But You. Small mercies.
