If you have ever thought modern dating felt like a trial by fire, One Night Only takes that existential dread and literally puts a timer on it. Directed by Will Gluck who you might know from his other rom-coms such as Easy A and Friends with Benefits, the movie drops us into a slightly skewed near-future NYC where premarital sex is illegal except for one night a year. Yes that’s right: this is The Purge but for sex.
Forget sweet, lingering eye contact across a crowded bar; this is essentially Black Friday at the Department of Romance, where everyone is aggressively sprinting toward a morning curfew with the desperation of a shopper lunging for the last discounted flatscreen.
Enter Owen, a freshly dumped New York pizza shop owner played with delightfully dry exhaustion by Callum Turner, and Allie, an unrepentant romantic brought to life by Monica Barbaro, who is somehow still hunting for genuine connection amidst the horny pandemonium. Naturally, these two cross paths in New York City, sparking an immediate chemistry that survives everything the night throws at them. Supported by a fabulously eclectic ensemble featuring Maya Hawke, Julia Fox, Molly Ringwald, LeVar Burton, and Ziwe, the film bounces along with a lively, pop-infused pulse.
To be fair, the movie isn’t entirely reinventing the rom-com wheel, and the logic behind this bizarre government mandate to only have protected sex on one night a year unless you’re married falls apart the second you spend more than two seconds thinking about it. It also plays things a bit surprisingly safe with its raunch-factor, given the premise sounds like it was dreamt up on chat-GPT with a prompt around ‘the purge + something else’. But thankfully, Turner and Barbaro are charming enough to sell the frantic momentum, keeping the tone light, breezy, and surprisingly sweet.
One Night Only is worth checking out for a bit of mindless fun. It is witty, mildly unhinged, and an easy way to spend a couple of hours if you fancy a cheeky, fast-paced date-night flick that reminds you your own dating life could definitely be worse.
– The Plus Ones
