One Night Only Review

One Night Only is a film with the strangest premise for a light-hearted rom-com where America has turned into a totalitarian regime so they can monitor the population’s relationship status.

In America, premarital sex has been outlawed for three years. There is only a 12-hour window where unmarried people can have sex every year. On this night, a pizzeria owner, Owen (Callum Turner), gets ditched by his girlfriend, who wants to have sex with another man, and a jingle singer, Ally (Monica Barbaro), wants to make a connection with someone. As the night progresses, Owen and Ally’s paths keep intersecting.

One Night Only’s trailer made it seem like it was going to be a return to light, frothy rom-coms of the 2010s. There was a comment from Owen saying that it’s one night of the year that allowed people to have sex, and I assumed it was figurative, but no, it was literal. This was a film that combined The Handmaid’s Tale and The Purge. It’s an idea that could have worked as a dark satire about how big tech and the religious right have teamed up to control people’s behaviour, and maybe that was the original idea, but it ended up mutating into a mainstream comedy. The screenplay was on the 2024 Black List, but the director, Will Gluck, performed a rewrite.

When watching the film, I questioned how this world worked. The first was how this law was enforced: either everyone in America would be monitored in some way, or the law was unenforceable. The filmmakers chose the former, with everyone having a tattoo that monitored people’s body chemistry so the authorities would know when unmarried people were doing the taboo action. It reminded me of a joke in Futurama where people could choose which hand they could have their sex monitoring chip. Other questions that came to mind when watching: did the 12-hour sex window change depending on the time zone, or was it the same across America? Do foreign nationals have to get a tattoo? The film introduced two non-American characters who were partaking in the event. An advocate for the mandate said it resulted in a massive reduction in teen pregnancies, leading to the question: do adolescents have to get a sex monitoring tattoo?

One Night Only was not set in the future where there were massive societal changes. It was set in contemporary America, and it was clearly close to our own. People used smartphones and apps, and there were pop culture references to Black Panther and pop songs such as Sara Bareilles’ “Brave,” and one character even said “Thanks Obama.” The grounded approach ended up making the world less believable: if a government did try to impose something so restrictive in a Western country, there would be more resistance than some graffiti and people shouting slogans. Characters point out how absurd this situation was, which ended up drawing more attention to the flaws of the world-building.

The film was one long cockblock. Owen and Ally were on a hopeless quest for sex. When Owen was searching for a sacred item, it felt like an episode of EastEnders when Alfie Moon wanted to get intimate with Kat Slater. Other situations involved one character falling for a honey trap, whilst another was close to shagging a criminal. When the film wasn’t focused on Owen and Ally’s failed sexcapades, then its humour was showing the population of New York going at it like rabbits, or an annoying 12-year-old boy who wanted to get in on the action.

The art department does deserve praise. They did make the world feel lived in because of all the government posters, rebellious graffiti, and timers across the city ticking down to the end of the exemption period. The designer clearly had some fun, like showing the acceptable and prohibited sex acts on a poster. This was able to inject some justified humour.

Barbaro and Turner also deserve recognition. They are both on the rise thanks to roles in A Complete Unknown and Eternity, and they had great chemistry. They were likeable, and they did their best to lift the material. They deserve better projects.

One Night Only was unable to overcome its bizarre premise and failing as a raunchy rom-com and a social satire.