Review: One Night Only

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

"One Night Only" mostly induces groans (though not the type for which the film is hoping), but I suppose it deserves some sort of credit for being the only - checks notes - raunchy rom com that is set in a Christofascist regime.

Playing sort of like a more humorous (albeit only occasionally) version of "The Purge," replete with meet-cutes and jokes involving people running around barely clothed in Manhattan, "One Night Only" doesn't exactly start with the greatest premise. 

In the film, Congress has recently voted for The Mandate, which declares that non-married people can only have sex one night per year and, therefore, this one particular night turns into a sexual free-for-all in which people are roaming the streets desperately trying to hook up with strangers.

At the center of this story is Allie (Monica Barbaro), whose job singing jingles to the tune of popular songs about such things as psoriasis is one of the picture's few jokes that land. Allie had a seemingly successful hookup the previous year, but was ghosted by the guy.

The film's other lead character is Owen (Callum Turner), a sincere pizza shop owner whose girlfriend (Maya Hawke), tells him on the big night that she plans on sleeping with someone else, leaving him bummed out and scrambling for companionship.

Most of the film involves these two characters continually bumping into one another - the first time literally - and becoming friends throughout the day, all the while evading the obvious solution: that they should be together. Instead, they ignore the obvious and seek sexual healing elsewhere - he with an older British woman whom he awkwardly brings to his mother's house for a hookup and she with a musician who gets increasingly creepier.

But while the film, for most of its running time, is a mostly harmless rom com with a premise that seems relevant to the moment, but then doesn't do anything interesting with it, the movie ultimately takes a very peculiar route toward its end in which its protagonists decide to simply embrace the fascist rules imposed on them - but for the sake of romance, or something like that. 

There have been a few films that have adequately captured the present moment we're living in, whether it's Paul Thomas Anderson's Oscar-winning "One Battle After Another" or some of the horror movies of the past few years. "One Night Only," however, isn't one of them. It tries to mine laughs out of an unsettling situation before ultimately saying to just give in to it. 

If there's anything that makes the film watchable, it is its two leads, both of whom are likable. But the script demands ludicrous things from them and, ultimately, their presence isn't enough to recommend this oddly conceived film.