There’s something almost quaint about One Night Only being sold on the promise of sex.
Will Gluck’s latest romantic comedy takes place in an alternate United States where premarital sex has been outlawed under a government decree known as “The Mandate.” For 364 days of the year, unmarried citizens are expected to keep their hands to themselves. Then comes one glorious evening where the rules are temporarily lifted and everyone is free to indulge. Naturally, the country collectively loses its mind.
It’s The Purge, essentially, if everyone was horny instead of homicidal.
That wonderfully ridiculous concept gives Gluck plenty to play with, and One Night Only certainly enjoys the possibilities of a New York City suddenly transformed into one enormous playground of pent-up desire. People are making out everywhere, businesses have adapted themselves to the occasion, advertising has become even more suggestive than usual, and the film scatters amusing cameos and sight gags throughout the city. But for all the raunchiness surrounding its characters, One Night Only ultimately reveals itself to be something surprisingly old-fashioned: a romantic comedy that actually believes in romance.
Monica Barbaro stars as Allie, a struggling singer whose career has largely amounted to recording legally dubious approximations of famous songs for commercials, while Callum Turner is Owen, a pizza restaurant owner whose girlfriend (Maya Hawke) has decided that their relationship shouldn’t prevent her from taking advantage of the year’s one consequence-free evening. A chance collision brings Allie and Owen together, sending them across New York over the course of one increasingly chaotic night.
From there, Travis Braun‘s screenplay constructs a consistently witty tale of almosts, interruptions, misunderstandings and escalating hijinks. The Mandate provides the gimmick, but Gluck wisely doesn’t allow it to completely swallow the romantic comedy happening within it.
That works primarily because Barbaro and Turner have electric chemistry.
Barbaro has already proven herself a remarkably versatile performer, but One Night Only allows her to flex muscles we haven’t necessarily seen from her before. She’s effortlessly funny as Allie, particularly when navigating the indignities of her music career, and the film makes surprisingly effective use of Barbaro’s genuinely impressive singing voice. There’s an appealing sharpness to Allie that prevents her from becoming another generically quirky rom-com heroine, but Barbaro also knows exactly when to let that armour slip.
Turner, meanwhile, continues to prove after Eternity that romantic comedy suits him remarkably well. Owen is sweet without being bland, sexy without the film needing to constantly remind us of it (though a series of shirtless segments don’t hurt), and just pathetic enough in certain moments to make his misfortunes very funny. Turner particularly excels at physical comedy; some of the biggest laughs come not from what Owen says, but from a facial expression or the increasingly defeated way Turner carries himself through whatever indignity has just befallen him.
Together, they’re terrific.
Gluck understands though that chemistry isn’t simply two attractive actors trading sarcastic dialogue until the screenplay decides they’re in love. Allie and Owen annoy each other, amuse each other, gradually understand each other and, crucially, exist as people outside their attraction. Their individual problems don’t disappear whenever they’re sharing the screen. By the time One Night Only starts asking us to emotionally invest in the possibility of them choosing each other, Barbaro and Turner have done enough work to make that investment feel earned.
Around them, Gluck builds an enjoyably heightened version of New York. The city is romantic without being pristine; there is a pleasingly lived-in quality to the locations as Allie and Owen bounce from one misadventure to another. The enormous number of background hookups also becomes its own running visual joke without turning the movie into the feature-length orgy its premise could easily have encouraged.
The cameos are similarly best left largely unspoiled. Some amount to little more than a face appearing for a gag, while one particularly amusing appearance exists through LinkedIn.
Where One Night Only becomes less assured is in explaining the world that necessitated The Mandate in the first place. There’s an obvious political satire embedded in the idea of a government regulating people’s sex lives, and the film occasionally reaches toward fascism, American political history and the inherent absurdity of legislating morality. But it never quite commits enough for those ideas to become genuinely incisive. The rules themselves can feel unnecessarily convoluted, too, particularly once marriage and various exemptions enter the conversation.
It’s strange because the universe is otherwise impressively thought through. Some of the funniest jokes are simply observations about how businesses, media and ordinary people would adapt if this absurd law actually existed. One Night Only is at its best when the political commentary emerges organically through those details rather than when characters stop to explain the machinery behind them.
There’s another slightly frustrating contradiction at the heart of the film. For a movie built entirely around one night of liberated sexual activity, One Night Only is noticeably more coy than its premise suggests.
Gluck has discussed earlier iterations of the film containing more sexual material before reactions from younger test audiences reportedly contributed to it being toned down. The finished version isn’t prudish – the dialogue is frequently filthy, sexual behaviour surrounds the characters and suggestion is everywhere – but you can occasionally sense a more genuinely adult movie trying to push through its sanitised edges.
It’s particularly disappointing because Hollywood so rarely produces glossy, star-driven theatrical romantic comedies aimed unapologetically at adults anymore. There’s something backwards about an adult sex comedy having to temper its sexuality to accommodate a demographic whose increasingly conservative attitudes towards sex on screen have become a recurring industry talking point. One Night Only doesn’t need explicit sex to work, but it shouldn’t have to apologise for sexuality either.
And that tension speaks to a larger reason why the film feels refreshing. Modern romantic comedies have increasingly migrated towards the safe, disposable sheen of streaming, where attractive people inhabit beautiful apartments, experience an easily digestible misunderstanding and kiss approximately ninety minutes later. Gluck, who has already played in the genre with Easy A, Friends with Benefits and Anyone But You, remembers that rom-coms can be messy, horny, ridiculous and still completely sincere.
In that respect, One Night Only feels closer in spirit to the studio romantic comedies of the 1980s, ’90s and early 2000s than much of what the genre has produced lately. It’s willing to be broad. It’s willing to be sentimental. It’s willing to let its leads behave stupidly. Most importantly, it gives them enough room together that we understand why these two people might actually want to see each other after the credits roll.
For all its jokes about a nation desperately trying to get laid, the sweetest irony is that One Night Only ultimately makes a persuasive argument for wanting something more.
Barbaro and Turner are enormously responsible for that. Individually charming and collectively irresistible, they elevate even the film’s weaker jokes and give its emotional turns a sincerity that the deliberately absurd premise shouldn’t necessarily be able to sustain. The result is sexy, consistently funny and unexpectedly lovely; a reminder that the best romantic comedies don’t just make you wait for two people to kiss.
They make you care whether they do.
THREE AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
One Night Only is screening in Australian theatres from August 13th, 2026.
