‘One Night Only’ review: More than a quickie

Directed by Will Gluck, One Night Only turns a kooky dystopian premise into a surprisingly heartfelt rom-com about (emotional) foreplay.

Romantic comedies usually sprint toward the first kiss as though they’re racing a stopwatch. One Night Only spends its entire runtime arguing that the stopwatch itself is the problem. So arrives Will Gluck’s latest, which comes wrapped in one of the year’s most delightfully ridiculous high concepts: a near-future America where premarital sex is legal for only one twelve-hour window each year. From there, One Night Only proceeds to use that premise as bait for something warmer and considerably more romantic than its marketing lets on.

Thankfully, One Night Only never treats its premise as an excuse for world-building gymnastics, though it does much of that too. Its nationwide “mandate” serves less as a political thought experiment than an emotional pressure cooker. Everyone in New York races through one frantic evening searching for chemistry before the clock runs out. Existing relationships bend under the weight of curiosity. Strangers evaluate one another like contestants in a speed-dating Olympics. Every conversation sounds loaded with a strange urgency, as people try to compress months of uncertainty into minutes. The result resembles The Purge by way of Before Sunrise, with just enough satirical bite to sharpen the comedy without overwhelming the romance.

Intimacy and other drugs.

Owen (Callum Turner) enters the night expecting to propose to his longtime girlfriend (Maya Hawke) before discovering she intends to spend the “exemption” with someone else. Across town, aspiring singer and commercial jingle writer Allie (Monica Barbaro) enters the same evening with every intention of finding her own connection. Their repeated collisions through the city create the engine that drives the film, although “meet-cute” hardly feels sufficient for the wonderfully messy series of accidents, interruptions, parties, arrests, pizza stops, and chance encounters Gluck strings together. New York becomes a giant pinball machine where every ricochet nudges two people toward discovering they value the same things for reasons neither fully understands yet.

Photo Credit: Universal Pictures

That sprawling comic momentum masks a surprisingly focused idea. Most romantic comedies treat sex as the culmination of intimacy. The, ahem, climax, if you will. One Night Only spends nearly every scene insisting intimacy grows somewhere else entirely. The government imagines it can legislate desire through scarcity. Dating culture imagines attraction improves through endless optimization. Parties promise instant chemistry. Billionaires package exclusivity as romance. Even Owen initially mistakes careful planning for emotional security, arriving with flowers, reservations, and a proposal polished to perfection. Every institution in the film believes love becomes stronger when enough pressure surrounds it.

Yet the script keeps circling back to moments that exist before or after sex rather than the act itself. Characters linger over conversations instead of conquests. One of the sweetest exchanges revolves around a children’s story about New York’s Little Red Lighthouse, whose purpose survives despite being overshadowed by the George Washington Bridge. The metaphor lands because Allie secretly shares the lighthouse’s insecurity. She possesses talent but struggles to believe anyone truly needs what she has to offer. Owen sees her before he desires her, and that order changes the game.

The Purge meets Before Sunrise.

Barbaro employs much of that emotional burden with effortless charm. She gives Allie an infectious warmth that never slips into manic pixie territory because uncertainty constantly tempers her optimism. Every joke flies with a flicker of self-consciousness. Every burst of confidence threatens to evaporate as quickly as it appeared. Barbaro demonstrates how attraction grows through specificity, so she fills seemingly incidental moments with revealing little choices. Watching Allie explain why the lighthouse matters tells us far more than another scene of conventional flirting ever could.

Photo Credit: Universal Pictures

Turner complements her beautifully by refusing to sand Owen into the standard lovable schlub. His heartbreak derives from routine rather than melodrama. He believes planning demonstrates devotion. He memorizes favorite meals, wears favorite shirts, builds evenings around favorite restaurants. Life rewards that instinct until one fateful omakase suddenly reveals love has never operated according to his blueprint. Turner lets Owen unravel gradually, replacing certainty with curiosity instead of cynicism. This evolution gives the romance room to breathe because Owen stops auditioning to become somebody’s ideal partner and starts paying attention to the person standing in front of him.

Their chemistry gives the movie its heartbeat, although Gluck deserves equal credit for understanding pace. The film races from one comic set piece to another while allowing emotional discoveries to sneak into the margins. Running gags unexpectedly evolve into character revelations. Supporting players boast outsized comic energy before stealthily reinforcing the movie’s central argument that everybody spends this night searching for shortcuts toward connection. The ensemble feels game for every absurd detour, particularly whenever the script leans into the civic chaos created by its premise.

And yes, that premise constantly asks the audience for more goodwill than logic. The mechanics of the mandate invite countless questions the screenplay wisely chooses not to bother answering in much detail, if at all. Perhaps because answers would inevitably drag the movie toward policy rather than personality. Gluck recognizes this story as theatrically packaged functions best as heightened romantic folklore instead of rigorous speculative fiction. And that instinct generally pays dividends, although a handful of jokes wander long enough to briefly stall the momentum before the next emotional beat gets everything humming again.

The bottom line.

Modern studio romantic comedies often hedge their sincerity behind layers of irony, afraid earnestness might feel old-fashioned. One Night Only interestingly plants its flag somewhere else entirely. Gluck embraces sentiment without apology. Characters speak openly about their loneliness. The soundtrack swells. The city glows. People sing because singing feels like the most honest thing possible. Most of the film’s creative decisions back up this ongoing simple belief. That vulnerability makes for better stories than cool detachment ever could.

It’s hard to ship a rom-com in theaters these days. But the successful ones thrive whenever filmmakers remember the genre has always concerned itself more with buildup than steam. They ask whether two people can match one another at the same emotional place before life pulls them apart again. One Night Only dresses that timeless question in dystopian clothes, then quietly slips them off until all that remains are two wonderfully drawn people discovering that connection flourishes at its own pace.

One Night Only opens in theaters on Friday, August 7. Watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Jon Negroni

Jon is one of the co-founders of InBetweenDrafts. He hosts the podcasts Thank God for Movies, Mad Men Men, Rookie Pirate Radio, and Fantasy Writing for Barbarians. He doesn’t sleep, essentially.