One Night Only: A Silly High Concept Rom-Com

What if The Purge were a romantic comedy, and instead of one night where murder was legal, it was one night where premarital sex was? It sounds like a fever dream, but a major studio actually greenlit that idea, and it’s now in theatres as One Night Only.

Set in a fictional version of our world where everything appears to be exactly the same except for one crucial difference: a far-right religious government has outlawed premarital sex. Every citizen is required to get a tattoo identifying whether they’re married or single. However, there is one loophole. To appease the large majority of the population that opposed the legislation, the government allows one 12-hour period each year when premarital sex is legal. Unsurprisingly, the result is complete chaos, as seemingly everyone heads out in hopes of getting lucky.

For some, however, the night is anything but liberating. Owen (Turner) owns a neighborhood pizza shop and can’t wait to finish work so he can spend a romantic evening with his longtime girlfriend, during which he plans to propose. Instead, over dinner at an upscale restaurant, she reveals that she intends to use the annual loophole to sleep with someone else. Meanwhile, Allie (Barbaro), a struggling singer reduced to recording radio jingles, hopes to find true love on the least romantic night of the year. After her best friend abandons her to hook up with a stranger, she sets off on her own in search of a meaningful connection.

A high-concept premise woven into a romantic comedy isn’t exactly new. Films like Serendipity, Sliding Doors, Pleasantville, and even last year’s Eternity, if you consider them as romantic comedies, all distinguish themselves by pairing familiar rom-com beats with an inventive hook. After decades of the same formula, these kinds of films arrive with an inherent advantage simply because they’re trying something different. That being said, the problem with One Night Only is that it uses its premise almost entirely as window dressing. Beneath the unique setup lies the exact same romantic comedy we have seen a hundred times before. It markets itself as a raunchy sex comedy set in an authoritarian society, but the concept is shockingly underdeveloped, and for a film centered around sex, it’s remarkably tame and oddly sexless.

The world-building raises far more questions than it answers. Aside from premarital sex being outlawed, society functions almost identically to our own. Why was sex criminalized in the first place? Why are condoms suddenly a scarce resource? What actually happens if someone breaks the law outside the designated night? Is this policy worldwide or limited to one country? The screenplay never seems particularly interested in answering any of these questions, making the world feel less like a believable dystopia and more like a gimmick.

What is even more frustrating is how the film hints at genuinely interesting political commentary, before abandoning it altogether. The premise naturally invites satire about the rise of religious extremism, government control over bodily autonomy, and the ways evangelical politics can reduce sex to something transactional rather than intimate. Those ideas are briefly introduced but quickly discarded in favor of increasingly broad comedy and wacky set pieces, leaving the film feeling very hollow despite the rich thematic possibilities at its disposal.

Fortunately, romantic comedies often succeed or fail based on the chemistry between their leads, and that’s where One Night Only manages to stay afloat. Barbaro and Turner are two rising stars finally getting the opportunity to headline a studio rom-com in the same way Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney did a few years ago with Anyone But You. While they each boast effortless charisma, they are also far stronger actors than this screenplay deserves. They elevate every scene through sheer charm, selling a relationship that the script itself never fully earns. Just as importantly, they seem to understand exactly how ridiculous the premise is and lean into it, revealing comedic instincts that neither has had much opportunity to showcase before.

One Night Only is an undeniably ridiculous movie that falls apart the moment you begin thinking about its premise. Its world-building is inconsistent, its satire is undercooked, and its script rarely takes advantage of the concept at its center. Yet thanks to the infectious chemistry of Barbaro and Turner, two genuinely likable lead performances, and a premise so bizarre that it remains entertaining almost by accident, the film still functions as an enjoyable summer guilty pleasure, even if it’s anchored by a weak screenplay and uninspired direction.

still courtesy of Universal Pictures

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Tristan French