Movie Review: One Night Only

By taking place in a fascist version of the United States where premarital sex has been outlawed by the government except for one night a year and relying on a plot driver that is catnip for the portion of the viewing audience that demands a thorough explanation for everything they see on screen, One Night Only is destined to alienate some people out there before they even sit down to watch it. The first half of that equation is one that I can understand as having a fascist backdrop adds an ominous layer to what is designed to be a light romcom that can be difficult to overlook. 

For me, One Night Only doesn't seriously engage enough with the political angle of its world to impact the movie in any meaningful way. The whole "The Purge but for sex" premise is almost exclusively used to put its protagonists Ally (Monica Barbaro) and Owen (Callum Turner) in a string of ridiculous situations as they run on sometimes parallel but often unintentionally overlapping tracks around New York City in search of some kind of meaningful connection on this chaotic night. With this narrative framing in mind, I believe that One Night Only works well. Barbaro and Turner have a natural ease to their dynamic that allows them to pull off the jabs they throw at each other along with the longing gazes and heartfelt conversations that fuel their eventual romantic connection, the whirlwind nature of the protagonists' journey around NYC allows for the expert deployment of its sizable supporting cast (Molly Ringwald, LeVar Burton and Charlie Gillespie are the top standouts) to help play up the  situational comedy before they disappear back into the night and Will Gluck pulls off what is arguably the single greatest feat of his career by turning a Maroon 5 needle drop into one of the funniest moments of the entire movie. There are a couple of shaky notes at the very end that get in the way of the sugar high it had been effortlessly coasting on up to that point, but on the whole, I found this to be funnier and anchored by a stronger central romance than Gluck's last movie Anyone But You.

Grade: B