Movie Review – ‘One Night Only’ imagines a nightmare world with only 12 hours of premarital sex allowed each year

Certainly didn’t have a reimagining of The Purge as a rom-com on my bingo card. But here we are with One Night Only, which follows Owen (Callum Turner) and Allie (Monica Barbaro) as each attempts to get laid on the one day of the year the government allows premarital sex. Owen, a pizzeria owner, has been looking forward to using the 12-hour period to do the horizontal mambo with girlfriend Malika (Maya Hawke) all year, but after being dumped for another guy, he decides to make the most of the night and find someone to do the dirty deed with. Allie, meanwhile, wants to “find a good guy” amongst the thousands of horny guys simply looking to take the hot dog bus to taco town. As one character describes the night, “we’ve got to get a year’s worth in 12 hours.”

An aspiring singer whose career is made up of hilarious commercial jingles, Allie often gets lost in daydreams, escaping reality for just a few minutes and imagining a different life. After Allie is abandoned by her BFF, she too makes it a mission to make the best of the evening. What transpires is one of the most ridiculous plots in movie history, including Owen and Allie spending much of the evening fighting over who gets to use the last condom in New York.

It’s fair to say that the idea of replacing murder and crime (a la The Purge) with sex makes for an interesting premise for a film, but screenwriter Travis Braun never quite brings it all together. Leaving aside the fact that the reason for the 364-day ban on coitus is never fully explained and, well, makes zero sense, hiring a screenwriter whose sole credits revolve around children’s cartoons will forever leave me scratching my head. That’s not to say Braun doesn’t effectively write comedy — One Night Only has a number of laugh-out-loud moments — it’s more that many of those moments feel a bit too slapstick. Even their meet-cute is a bit too on the nose when the two characters literally bump into each other. Again, not a bad thing, just a bit off-brand for director Will Gluck.

Speaking of Gluck, the director is proving to be one of very few folks behind the screen who can be counted on to bring a quality comedy into theaters. Gluck made a name for himself with 2010’s Easy A starring a then still relatively unknown Emma Stone. That was followed up the next year with Friends With Benefits starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake, and then, over a decade later, after making a return to rom-coms, the runaway 2023 hit Anyone But You, which cemented Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell as stars. Which brings us to the stars of One Night Only.

Barbaro, who got her big break with Lifetime’s UnREAL, experienced her first taste of stardom when she starred alongside Tom Cruise in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, holding her own amongst the boys as Lt. Natasha ‘Phoenix’ Trace. But it was her Academy Award-nominated performance as Joan Baez in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown that really put her on the map. Still today, though, she remains relatively unknown and, in my opinion, is under appreciated in Hollywood. Few in La La Land have the acting (and singing) chops of the extremely talented Barbaro. Perhaps it will be her turn in Luca Guadagnino’s film about Sam Altman and OpenAI or the Ocean’s Eleven prequel that will finally have her name listed amongst the crème de la crème.

Sporting a New York accent in the film, the BAFTA-nominated British actor Callum Turner follows up 2025’s rom-com Eternity with another strong performance in One Night Only. Not classically handsome like many leading actors, Turner makes up for it with charisma and being very relatable to the everyman. Then again, the everyman doesn’t marry a pop superstar like Turner just did when he exchanged vows with Dua Lipa. Like Barbaro, Turner feels like he too is on the cusp of taking the next step in Hollywood.

It’s difficult to say what makes One Night Only just an average — or perhaps just above average — comedy. The film has a ton of laughs, but it still never quite comes together. Gluck purposely chose to remove much of the nudity in the film — not just because Generation Alpha and Gen Z are prudes, but because of a societal shift. As he told Variety magazine, “I believe it’s been a societal shift from taking nudity in adult situations and putting them on your phones at home for everybody. Now it’s more of a private, intimate thing that people don’t want to see when they’re in a shared experience. Whenever people now see nudity or very adult situations in a big theater, they get uncomfortable.” But, by taking that element out of the film, it’s left with far too many people just making out in public, which gets more strange and creepy each time it occurs on-screen. Gluck’s use of cameos — both live and via photos — provides fun Easter egg moments and are better left experienced than read about online.

Barbaro is magnetic on screen and she and Turner have strong enough chemistry to carry the film, but Braun’s script grows sillier by the minute. There are moments that really hit well — Owen and Allie spending time alone in Owen’s pizzeria being one of them, Allie overcoming her stage fright being another — but those scenes are few and far between.

Rom-coms on the big screen are far too rare these days — the same could be said about straight comedies — so it’s difficult to bash Gluck’s attempt here, as it is a film far better enjoyed with a crowd of strangers than at home alone on the couch. Cineplexes are packed with moviegoers seeing Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey, but if you’re seeking something different, One Night Only may be just what you’re looking for. Who knows, maybe you’ll get to go home and make the best use of the following 12 hours…