By Charles Hubbard, Film & TV Deputy Editor
Right from the moment Will Gluck’s follow-up to the breakout success of Anyone But You (2023) was announced, it was greeted with aggressive, mocking derision. A rom-com set in a world where people are only legally allowed to have sex on one night of the year? It makes the various oddities in Gluck’s previous films, which also include Easy A (2010) and Friends with Benefits (2011) look practically low-concept by comparison.
You would think, therefore, that the film itself would try to ignore its ludicrous and deeply unsettling premise as much as possible and hope that the audience is too focused on the attractiveness of the two leads (well, one of them, at least) to consider any of the deeper implications of a government-mandated ban on sex. You would think wrong. In a series of ridiculous mental gymnastics not seen since Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis asked the question “What if you were a Beatles fan in a world where the Beatles never existed?”, Gluck and Travis Braun (writing his first - and probably last - feature film script) focus the exact wrong amount on the complications of the premise, explicitly raising issues of contraception, teen pregnancy and anti-mandate movements without properly answering any of the questions that arise from them. And, when the various baffling plot twists and narrative vignettes make the film feel at least twice as long as it is, what else can the audience do but contemplate this fascist, sex-negative view of America while waiting for our two main characters to fuck?
It’s the one night of the year when single people are allowed to have sex (dopamine levels are tracked by the government to check when citizens are orgasming, in case you were wondering). Ostensibly charming pizzeria owner Owen (Bond hopeful Callum Turner, who is regrettably about to take a lot of hits in this review) has just been dumped by his girlfriend Malika (a blink-and-you’ll-miss-her Maya Hawke) in favour of a meaningless fling. On the other side of New York, which the film treats like a small town, Allie (Monica Barbaro cementing her status as one of Hollywood’s pre-eminent challengers to the Julia Roberts crown) is desperately trying to find genuine love and connection on, as the film’s trailer cutesily puts it, ‘the least romantic night of the year’. For the next 60 - 80 minutes (depending on when you’re liable to walk out or fall asleep - both understandable responses), the two protagonists don’t so much dance around each other as they do blunder towards each other as failed sexual encounter after failed sexual encounter leaves each other as the only viable alternative left. Not exactly romantic in the traditional sense, yet Allie falls right for it. Eventually.
Due to the structural demands of the Hollywood rom-com (and this film’s certainly not about to break the mould, occasionally bizarre as it may be), the two leads must end up together. However, Gluck and Braun contradictingly demand that they must exhaust all other possible hook-up opportunities with only a single condom to share between them. Threading this needle requires the film to adopt a very sex-negative attitude that couldn't feel more dated or retrograde in our current cultural climate. Everyone who seems interested in having sex with either of the main characters is either a thief, criminal, egomaniac, sadist or close-up magician (saving the worst for last). The film therefore inadvertently declares all single people to be raving monsters and the only sane ones to be happily married. It’s obviously unrealistic to expect the film to actively oppose the sex ban when its plot so squarely hinges on said ban. But did it have to show actual, organised resistance movements that the protagonists dismissively shrug off? One of the characters literally says “maybe the fascists were right about this one after all”.
In the wake of her star turn in Top Gun: Maverick (2022) Barbaro has emerged as one of our finest rising stars (being the sole bright spot in James Mangold’s flatly tiresome Bob Dylan biopic) and this film is no exception. She plays her character’s nerves, wit and sincerity all without missing a beat and tries to generate some genuine chemistry with Turner. Unfortunately, her efforts go entirely unreciprocated on his end. Turner delivers one of the most disastrous rom-com leading man performances since Orlando Bloom in Elizabethtown (2005) and Gerard Butler in The Ugly Truth (2009), unable to play off his natural smarminess (used by Mark Jenkin to excellent effect in this year’s Rose of Nevada) as likeable nor make any of the jokes land. The characters around him comment on his apparent attractiveness (which I am still unable to see to any extent) at such frequency, I started wondering whether it was specifically written into his contract. I’m surprised one of the characters didn’t also shout “And you’d also make a great Bond!” The only upside is that, if you squint, he could almost pass for Josh O’Connor.
Ella Saxton
As perversely funny as it can sometimes be to watch a traditional rom-com with the same plot mechanics as Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) - where the main characters constantly get close to consummating throughout the night but never do - the resulting mess just isn’t that entertaining in any other way. Not truly bonkers enough to be consistently engaging but not charming enough to convince you that a sex-banning fascist state isn’t really that bad if you think about it, One Night Only is a big swing and an even bigger miss. Hopefully, like his two characters, Gluck will have better luck next time.
Featured image: IMDb / One Night Only
Would you want to live in a fascist state where you're only allowed to have sex for one night of the year?
