OVERVIEW
One Night Only imagines a world where single people can only have sex for one night a year (really). The window runs from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., and both Owen (Callum Turner) and Allie (Monica Barbaro) find themselves chasing the right person to consummate their carnal desires. Owen, a pizza shop owner, is in this situation because his girlfriend told him a couple of minutes before the night starts that she would rather sleep with the neighbor, while Allie, a singer who can only perform when no one is watching, wants to find true love and definitely couldn’t have attempted that during the rest of the year, so she must go find her person on the one night when everyone else is only thinking about sex. The two eventually cross paths and jeopardize each other’s plans. Then they meet again, and again… and again.
BACKGROUND
Years spent working on Disney Junior will do strange things to you, and for Travis Braun it meant writing this unquestionably unique but indefensibly awkward premise, a romcom crossed with the Purge series. The script topped the 2024 Black List, where Universal bought the rights and handed it to Will Gluck. The director of Easy A, Friends with Benefits, and Anyone But You then rewrote it himself. Marketing positioned the film as a celebration of the genre, and at CinemaCon Universal introduced it by playing clips from its own romantic comedy library before stating outright that fewer of these films are getting made and that love will leave theaters if nothing changes.
THE REVIEW
Is this the film that will save the rom-com as we once knew it, and rescue it from direct-to-streaming releases featuring C-list actors? It certainly tries hard to remind you of those films, with its 2000s-coded soundtrack and a collection of misunderstandings and sappy scenes, but the result is ultimately lackluster (get it? It lacks lust!).
Perhaps that is inevitable. Romantic comedies have changed because the world has changed. People no longer stumble into love the way they did before smartphones and dating apps, and One Night Only seems to recognize that, inventing an outlandish premise just to recreate the kind of chance encounters the genre once relied on.
Yet the entire concept is so strange, and its execution so disjointed, that it becomes increasingly difficult to accept this as a world people actually live in. I am willing to look past two people who look like Turner and Barbaro struggling to find dates (wouldn’t women be running to buy the condoms if it meant spending the night with Turner, instead of the other way around?), but if sex is only legal within marriage for the rest of the year, why doesn’t everyone simply get married? The film would rather you not think about the logistics, even as it fills the world with signs and warnings about prohibited sexual acts, drawing even more attention to how inconsistent the setting feels while leaving children far more exposed to all of it than they otherwise would be.
Looking past the elephant in the room, what remains is a mostly unremarkable romcom. Turner and Barbaro are undeniably appealing together, but the script gives them little to work with beyond their looks and passable chemistry. Allie is defined almost entirely by her desire to “meet the right guy,” while Owen’s overly well-behaved personality makes him pleasant enough, but rarely interesting. Their evening is filled with misunderstandings and romantic mishaps, and although the pair find themselves in plenty of awkward situations, the obstacles they face are so familiar and low stakes that the conflict never feels particularly engaging. As a result, the romance drifts along pleasantly enough, but never finds the passion or intensity needed to make the relationship feel truly alive.
The supporting cast fares better than the central romance, although the script rarely gives them enough to do. Molly Ringwald, LeVar Burton, and Maya Hawke are enjoyable enough, while the highlights are Allie’s two potential love interests, Charlie Gillespie and Andrew Burnap, along with Julia Fox as an unapologetically confident woman who sets her sights on Owen. Together, they inject the film with some much-needed energy. Their scenes are usually more enjoyable than seeing Owen and Allie attempt to steal a condom, yet they are simply mildly entertaining detours, fun, but never truly memorable. Beyond that, the film overstays its welcome, builds to an underwhelming climax (no pun intended), and features some of the most distracting background extra performances I have seen in recent memory.
FINAL THOUGHTS
For a film built around such a unique premise, One Night Only is surprisingly tame and rather boring. It settles for the bare minimum expected of a rom-com, pairing two attractive leads and sending them through a series of awkward situations until they inevitably fall for each other, even closing with a dance number (spoilers, but who cares? Just look at the poster). That may be enough for viewers simply looking for a new romantic comedy, especially given how few of them make it to theaters these days. As for me, I would rather have spent the night sleeping.
- 1Hadestown: The Musical
- 2Tuner
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- 161One Night Only#161 of 195
- Where to watch
- Rent or buy at Apple TV Store, Amazon Video
- Where to watch
- In Theaters
Play trailer
- Original title
- One Night Only
- Director
- Will Gluck
- Cast
- Monica Barbaro, Callum Turner, Maya Hawke, King Princess, Molly Ringwald, LeVar Burton, Charlie Gillespie, Quintessa Swindell
- Rated
- 14A
- Screenwriter
- Travis Braun, Grant Shaffer
- Composer
- Este Haim, Christopher Stracey
- Cinematography
- Yaron Orbach
- Editor
- Tia Nolan, Robert Nassau
- Country
- Language
- English
- Budget
- $25 million
- Box office
- $15.728 million
- Distributor (CA)
- Universal Pictures Canada