My second review of this week is One Night Only, a romantic comedy from Easy A and Anyone But You director Will Gluck which stars Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner as Allie and Owen, a commercial jingle singer and pizzeria owner respectively. Set in New York in a world in which premarital sex has been outlawed for 364 days of the year, the two cross paths with each other during the 12 hour exemption period and soon begin to question if it’s possible to find a genuine romantic connection on the least romantic night of the year. It’s been no secret that romcoms have been struggling to keep their place in theatres for years, with the landscape of Hollywood largely seeing them now as cookie cutter fodder for streaming services, even with exceptions such as Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy and Materialists proving that there is indeed still an audience for them. But One Night Only has arrived with a bevy of intrigue (as its script topped the Hollywood Black List in 2024) and concern from its premise alone, which essentially tries to take the romcom template and apply it to The Purge. And those concerns weren’t unfounded, as One Night Only is a disaster as both a romance and a comedy, and one of 2026’s most baffling bad films.
Bad Premise
From the very foundation of its premise, not only does One Night Only blatantly expose itself as a romcom written and directed by men, it’s also fundamentally broken in its execution. Writer Travis Braun seems completely unaware of the implications surrounding his conceit and how they affect anyone beyond heterosexuals, while also having a flimsy grasp on worldbuilding and setting up the logistics of how the government of this film’s world were able to come into power and enforce the ban in the first place. It ultimately ends up being self-defeating and indirectly validating its frankly dystopian concept because it doesn’t portray the act of intercourse as being appealing in any way, and the relationship between Owen and Allie goes exactly how you expect it will to an agonising degree. In fact, it almost seems disinterested in being a romcom as much of the runtime is spent on “wacky shenanigans” as the two leads search for protection (double entendre intended). The screenplay is so bizarre and ill-conceived that it becomes oddly charming yet also impossible to look away from in the same way as a trainwreck, but the pacing is so inconsistent that inevitably predictable plot beats are dragged out for far longer than they should and sitting through it becomes akin to a 12 hour endurance test rather than a 102 minute one.
Struggling Acting
At the very least, the two leads are trying their absolute best to make this material somewhat bearable, especially Monica Barbaro who after Top Gun: Maverick, A Complete Unknown and Crime 101 proves she has the range to be able to convincingly play a shrinking violet, stage fright-stricken singer in the same breath as Joan Baez. Callum Turner meanwhile does have a lot of charm and is game for some of the physical hijinks Owen finds himself subject to, but he seems to have been misdirected somewhat as Owen isn’t written as smarmy and smug as Turner is being made to perform him. The supporting cast meanwhile is absolutely wasted, as despite being filled with talent including Molly Ringwald, LeVar Burton, Maya Hawke, Nicholas Braun, Michelle Hurd and Julia Fox, not one of them are likeable or given anything funny to work with. Adding onto the ill-mixed cocktail of poor ingredients is Will Gluck’s direction, which shoots New York with no passion or energy and gives this night too much of an unrestrained, unenjoyable chaos, made even worse by how it seems to have been drenched in an ugly filter that makes it look like it takes place in Breaking Bad’s Albuquerque. The score by Este Haim and Christopher Stracey is disappointingly unmemorable considering the former produced a great one for Sunny Dancer a couple weeks previously, and some of the licensed soundtrack choices are so ill fitting they border on being unintentionally hilarious.
Overall
While I’ve made it quite clear by this point that One Night Only is not worth hooking up with, it’s such a fascinating mess and so earnest in its failure that it almost makes it worth recommending on that alone, but its wildly inconsistent pace, groan-inducingly trite central relationship and unpleasant visuals ultimately make it worth being better off celibate.
2/5 stars
The One Night Only movie review was created by Joe Warne, a member of the Sedgemoor fm team since 2017.
Joe specialises in providing weekly reviews of the latest film releases at 6.30pm each Monday evening as part of the Sedgemoor Life Show. Tune in each Monday for more movie reviews