Producers: Will Gluck and Jacqueline Monetta Director: Will Gluck Screenplay: Travis Braun Cast: Monica Barbaro, Callum Turner, Maya Hawke, Molly Ringwald, LeVar Burton, Julia Fox, Charlie Gillespie, Michelle Hurd, King Princess, Quintessa Swindell, Andrew Burnap, Mike Birbiglia, Ben Marshall, Ziwe, Ella Loudon, Sebastian Quinn, Mateo Ray, Roma Maffia, Sydney Cole Alexander, Bobby Cannavale, Pete Davidson, Flavor Flav and Blue DeTiger Distributor: Universal
Grade: D
If, come December, some critics group should decide to give an award for the dumbest movie premise of 2026, the award would go to “One Night Only” hands-down. As a caption tells us upfront, for three years the adult citizens of the U.S. have lived under a governmental mandate prohibiting pre-marital sex except for a single twelve-hour period annually, when it must be protected via condoms. A rigorous system of enforcement has been established, an unctuous official explains, to promote family values. In other word, it’s a “Purge” of rather a different order than the one that ostensibly satirical ultra-violent horror franchise proposed.
In order for the movie to work for you at all, you have to allow the idiocy of this system, with its obvious problems, to pass by unremarked, even if the myriad absurdities are hard to keep from gnawing at your brain for nearly two hours. But even if you can manage to suppress your incredulity for the duration, you have a right to expect that the movie would be something more than the frantically unfunny R-rated raunch-fest pretending to be a charming romantic comedy it turns out to be. Despite the efforts of two photogenic leads, this proves a night to forget rather than, with due apologies to Grant and Kerr, an affair to remember (an allusion, of course, that the witless script cannot resist).
If you saw Will Gluck’s previous romcom, the insipid, unaccountably successful “Anyone but You” of 2023, you’ll recognize the basic plot at work here. Two attractive New Yorkers—shy songstress Allie (Monica Barbaro) and handsome pizza place owner Owen (Callum Turner)—are in the market for love, but after a first meeting that ends badly must go through a lot of bickering before recognizing they’re meant for each other. The difference is that in the earlier movie, the leads’ gradual change of heart happened during a destination wedding in Australia. In this case it has to occur in the confusion of Sex Night, when they keep bumping accidentally into each other while linking up with others.
Allie, who. because of her stage fright, is relegated to recording commercial jingles for products like psoriasis cream, plans to spend the night with a friend (King Princess) as they search for Mr. Right, but once left alone she makes bad choices. First, she takes up with a charismatic guy (Sebastian Quinn) who joins her in a duet at a piano bar and invites her to go home with him; afterward she goes off with Ezra Stone (Charlie Gillespie), a rock star. Both trysts turn out very badly, with much slapstick involved.
As for Owen, his hope for a lovely night with his girlfriend (Maya Hawke) is shattered when she dumps him for a fling with a hunky neighbor. His desperate quest for a condom in order to bed a barmaid (a circumstance that leads to another run-in with Allie) goes awry, and eventually he uses an app to link up with a girl who, of course, turns out to be a larcenous sex worker. It’s just one unhappy instance in which Turner must strip down to the bare minimum—a ritual that Gluck seems to have a particular affinity for when his leading men are concerned, having also utilized it in “Anyone but You” in an excruciating sequence with Glen Powell. But it’s not merely Turner who suffers the indignity. Quinn does as well, and Barbaro must forego her slinky dress at one point too.
Of course, despite all the obstacles Allie and Owen wind up together in the end, in one of those rushing-to-find-you finales that at least avoids the hackneyed airport runway trope or its Empire State Building alternative.
Gluck and Braun surround the duo with an endless supply of drearily uninteresting characters—not just their potential bedmates but passersby like two actors, played by Bobby Cannavale and Pete Davidson, who can’t summon even a smile in a cameo that, like so much else, involves blatant product placement (something Scott Kuzio’z production design embraces in his backgrounds), or Roma Maffia as a bored bodega clerk.
But such incidental figures pale beside others who get greater screen time. One blanches to watch Owen’s mother Linda (Molly Ringwald) prepare for a night’s pleasure with her chosen partner (LeVar Burton)—an embarrassment for both actors. But even their appearance is trumped by the periodic intrusions of Troy (Mateo Rey), the obnoxious, sex-obsessed kid Allie’s lesbian roommate (Quintessa Swindell) is being paid to babysit for the night. You feel like gagging every time he shows up again.
Barbaro and Turner try to put this crudely titillating material across, but the sad fact is that they never muster even the shallow spark that Sydney Sweeney and Powell managed in “Anyone but You.” No is the movie redeemed by the glossily uninteresting work of Kuzio and cinematographer Yaron Orbach, though the latter’s efforts are undermined by the nighttime murkiness. Of particular importance to Jacqueline Demeterio’s costumes are the numerous tight, highly revealing dresses for the female characters, as appropriate for a fashion runway as for a night out in the Big Apple. Editors Tia Nolan and Robert Nassau try to give the episodic picture a sense of urgency, but they’re defeated by Gluck’s ponderous sense of rhythm.
Perhaps it’s in recognition of that lack of narrative propulsion that Este Haim and Christopher Stracey have slapped together a score that, abetted by dozens of needle drops, bangs away constantly at ear-splitting volume, desperately trying to persuade us that wat’s happening onscreen is charming and amusing. The music is arguably worse than the script or the acting, but it’s a very close call.
“One Night Only” calls to mind an old adage about movies that start from a misguided premise and then flail around trying to make it work. It’s a bad idea, poorly executed.