Two loners keep bumping into each other during their quest to find a partner on the one night of the year when premarital sex is allowed in a vaguely futuristic New York City in One Night Only, opening in Prague cinemas this weekend after bowing stateside last week. Essentially The Purge for rom-coms, this high-concept comedy from director Will Gluck (Anyone But You) has an irresistible setup, slick execution and two enormously charismatic leads in Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro, and really shouldn’t miss.
And yet it does. The problem isn’t the conventional romantic comedy at the center of One Night Only, which works reasonably well; it’s the bizarre world surrounding it, which the movie continually reminds us exists without ever meaningfully exploring. What might have been a sharp satire of state-enforced morality instead becomes a fairly standard night-out rom-com in which the biggest threat is running out of condoms.
Imagine a society where premarital sex has been outlawed by the U.S. government: biosensors monitoring citizens for sexual activity, ICE-like police squads enforcing the prohibition, and an entire generation growing up under the assumption that sex is something you simply don’t do unless you’re married.
How did such a law come about? How is it actually enforced? What happened to the underground sex economy? Are there resistance groups? What does the dating scene look like? Exactly what activities are banned, and how close can people get to them (think of Mormon-like soaking)? What about LGBTQ+ couples? What happens to birth rates? Do sex workers become de facto wives, and vice versa?
A movie exploring this society would be fascinating. But One Night Only takes place entirely during the annual 12-hour window, with New York’s young singles spilling into the streets in search of hookups. In other words, we’re watching the city behave almost exactly as it might on any ordinary Friday night. The distinction is that there are no condoms left at the pharmacy.
The Purge works because it asks what happens when the rules of society suddenly disappear. One Night Only asks what happens when the rules are back in place. Imagine a version of The Purge where crime is legal for 364 days of the year, and the entire movie is set during the one night where everything goes back to normal.
The conventional rom-com underneath all this is considerably better. Turner plays Owen, a pizzeria owner who arrives at the annual sex night expecting to spend it with his longtime girlfriend (Maya Hawke), only for her to announce that she’d rather hook up with someone else. Barbaro’s Allie is a singer frustrated by stage fright and stuck recording hilariously terrible pharmaceutical jingles, whose friends push her out into the city to find someone.
The two meet, separate, meet again and eventually become each other’s unlikely wingmen as they cross New York looking for other partners. It’s all very familiar, but Turner and Barbaro are so naturally likable together that the movie almost makes it work. Turner brings an appealingly awkward quality to Owen, while Barbaro gives Allie a grounded presence that makes her feel like a person rather than a collection of rom-com quirks. Their chemistry is the film’s strongest asset.
Gluck also knows how to shoot a city at night. Working with cinematographer Yaron Orbach, he captures a vibrant, romantic New York that recalls the nocturnal urban comedies of the 1980s. The extensive location shooting is a major plus, giving the film an energy that would be difficult to replicate on backlots and soundstages. The production design is similarly packed with little details suggesting how the sex mandate has reshaped everyday life.
There are fun supporting turns throughout, including Julia Fox as a sexually aggressive bartender and a scene-stealing turn by Ella Loudon, daughter of Daniel Craig. A parade of cameos, including Pete Davidson and Bobby Cannavale, doesn’t always land, but the film moves quickly enough that the weaker episodes don’t linger. Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, stars of Gluck’s Anyone But You, are referenced in amusing image-only cameos.
The problem is that every time the story reminds us of its central premise, it also reminds us how little the screenplay has to say about it. Travis Braun‘s plotting is efficient enough to keep Owen and Allie bouncing around the city, but the increasingly elaborate obstacles feel like machinery designed to prevent two attractive people from simply getting together.
Turner and Barbaro are good enough that a conventional romantic comedy starring the two of them might have been quite enjoyable. But One Night Only doesn’t let us forget that it has imagined a society in which the government has criminalized one of the most fundamental human activities. That isn’t background decoration; it’s a premise with enormous implications.
The film occasionally gestures toward satire, but it never follows through. Instead, it increasingly treats abstinence as something vaguely wholesome and casual sex as a source of comic misadventure. For a movie built around the concept of a state-enforced “sex purge,” that’s a remarkably timid position. One Night Only is ultimately a case of a great high concept getting in the way of an otherwise perfectly serviceable movie. The Sex Purge should have been the thing that made this rom-com interesting. Instead, it’s the reason it isn’t.
