One Night Only Movie Review A Nice Enough Rom Com That Aims To Be Radical

In One Night Only, Allie (Monica Barbaro) says it’s the “build-up” that is the best part of sex for her. Owen (Callum Turner) says it’s the “after”.

Quite like those predictable responses, this latest film by Will Gluck (with other bawdy modern romances behind him, such as Anyone But You, Friends with Benefits, Easy A) is a nice-enough rom-com that pretends very hard to be somewhat radical.

And while it is beating about the bush, the film’s “build-up” — despite all the kissing and petting and lovemaking going on around the two leads — is hardly a turn-on. While the “after” is not the movie’s concern.

But, in the middle, One Night Only truly sparkles, thanks largely to the charisma of Barbaro and Turner, and not by a small measure due to the shiny itsy-bitsy thing that Allie wears for a majority of the film. Rarely has a halter neck been called upon to hold up so much, and rarely has it been wielded this effortlessly.

The premise is that a “post-Obama” US government (that is as close to a political statement as the film gets) “outlawed” premarital sex three years ago, allowing single people to have sex only one night of the year. All the adults are branded on their wrists with marks which light up as red and green depending on whether you are conforming or breaking the rules.

The young people may abuse the “mandate”, so to speak, every so often, but clearly no one – including police, who are called upon to enforce the celibacy rule – believes in rebelling against it.

Owen and Allie cross each other’s paths on this once-in-a-year night, when amorous men and women can barely keep their hands off each other – be it in the Metro, restaurants, streets, cars, or open windows of their homes – except the two of them.

Owen has a girlfriend (Maya Hawke), who tells him on this day that she wants to “experiment” for this night, and says he is too “super-programmed” (the buttoned-down Polo T-shirt he wears is the only real example of it, though). Allie would rather have a meaningful connection than a meaningless romp in the hay, though it doesn’t require her much persuasion to wear the aforementioned dress to try her luck in any case.

Why the singles are not using the rest of the 364 days to prepare for this big night is not clear. But, if you go down that path, little about this “mandate”, and the uncomplaining obedience of it by a population, then little is.

Meanwhile, Owen and Allie keep running into each other across New York, even as they are going down different romantic paths, and several known faces drop in as cameos. Luckily for One Night Only, sparks indeed fly and the film does become an equal parts comedy as the desperate search for consummation – and in a hilarious sequence, for a condom – leads the two into several sticky situations.

So is One Night Only a cautionary tale about sexual prudism, or about sexual liberation? What is all that sex on one side, and that easy resolve not to have it for a year, meant to add up to? A President-like figure pops up once cites how “teen pregnancies are down to zero” as are sexually transmitted diseases. He also suggests the one-day’s concession is a “compromise”, for the US to show the world “that it is different”.

At least Trump won’t be auditioning for this one.

One Night Only movie cast: Monica Barbaro, Callum Turner, Maya Hawke, King Princess, Molly Ringwald, Pete Davidson, Bobby Cannavale, Nicholas Braun

One Night Only movie director: Will Gluck

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