When you think of the movie The Purge, the last thing you would compare it to is a romantic comedy. Director Will Gluck puts a new twist on that concept with One Night Only. This time there’s a ban on premarital sex, and for one night a year, everyone who’s not married is allowed to get it on.
The movie starts with Allie (Monica Barbaro), an aspiring singer, but to pay the bills she performs jingles to familiar songs with new lyrics to sell the latest prescription medication. She’s leaving work to meet up with a friend so they can play “wingmen” for each other in hopes of finding someone they connect with, not just a one-night stand. Owen (Callum Turner) rushes out of his pizza parlor so he can meet his girlfriend, Malika (Maya Hawke), for dinner. New York City is in chaos, as all the unmarried adults have been celibate for a year and are looking for sex. The technology keeping people in line is a sensor on everyone’s wrist that’s red and will only turn green when the ban is lifted for 12 hours.
When Owen sits down for their omakase sushi dinner, Malika delivers the bad news that she wants to use the night to sleep with someone else. To make matters worse, Owen had planned a surprise engagement proposal. Allie doesn’t have it any better. At the first bar she and her friend visit, she’s abandoned within minutes after her friend meets a gentleman while waiting in line for the bathroom. Heading to their next destinations alone, Allie and Owen literally bump into each other, and there’s immediate chemistry until Owen throws up his dinner and it’s game over.
Allie (Monica Barbaro) shares a quiet moment inside a neon-lit pizza shop in One Night Only.
“New York City is in chaos, as all the unmarried adults have been celibate for a year and are looking for sex.”
Eventually, Owen winds up at a local bar and hits it off with the stunning bartender. Allie goes out on her own and gets hit on by multiple men until she spots a potential suitor. However, both Allie and Owen, in their respective situations, are without a condom. Across the city, because the ban has been lifted, condoms are sold out until they cross paths again at a convenience store where there’s one left, complete with a hefty $200 price tag. So who’s going to get it? From there, the movie repeatedly separates Allie and Owen before bringing them back together in the most random places, building on this weird twist of fate
Romantic comedies always have to follow a certain formula, and these days I find it to be the hardest genre to pull off. I already liked the work of both Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro, so their casting left me curious about the film. One of the biggest ingredients for a solid romantic comedy is the chemistry between its two stars, and just like his film Anyone But You, with Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney, director Will Gluck manages to do it once again. The two rising actors hit the same level, so neither outshines the other, making their chemistry believable.
I usually stay away from trailers, and as my friend told me, it’s The Purge but with sex. I thought to myself, “How are they gonna pull this off?” In some ways, with the solid storytelling, that gimmick wasn’t even needed. The movie could have simply been about two people trying to find love or a hook-up, but the ticking-clock device adds to the shenanigans and outside encounters our characters experience. I’ll even say, just wait for romantic comedy legend Molly Ringwald to show up and have her moment to shine.
There are a lot of fun hijinks to enjoy, and I laughed quite a bit. In fact, I haven’t enjoyed a romantic comedy this much in a theater for a long time. I looked over at my friends and could see the smiles on their faces throughout. Normally, I’d say you can wait for streaming, but this is worth seeing in the theater, especially as a fun date movie. You’ll probably crave a slice of pizza afterward.
