It feels like it's been forever since we consistently had great studio rom-coms hitting theatres. There are always a handful of gems each year but gone are the decades where studios would throw a bunch of money to put two beautiful people on screen for us to laugh with. Again, there are still some gems, but we just don't see the genre get the love it deserves. At the tail end of 2023, Easy A director Will Gluck gave us Anyone But You, a throwback romcom that went on to be a huge financial success and proved that audiences will still show up for these movies. Now we have Gluck's follow up, One Night Only, a film that I can easily see being one of the surprise hits of the summer.
One Night Only is set in New York in a version of America where premarital sex is outlawed aside from one night a year. It's essentially The Purge but with sex, a premise that is frankly genius for a rom com. We follow Owen (Callum Turner), a pizzeria owner whose long term girlfriend tells him she wants to sleep with someone else, and Ally (Monica Barbaro), a singer looking for a genuine connection on the least romantic night of the year. As you can easily assume, the two cross paths throughout their night and slowly grow fond of each other despite starting off on the wrong foot.
Above anything else, a successful romantic comedy needs good chemistry, and One Night Only delivers and then some. Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro are each wildly charming on their own, but putting them together here is just magic. Ally's initial disinterest in Owen is a ton of fun largely due to how naturally handsome Turner is, but he also brings an irressitable cheekiness to their back and forth that makes you fall for him instantly. You fall for him pretty much right away, and Barbaro's hopeless romantic energy makes you care for her immediately as well. There are a bunch of fun side characters, but this is Turner and Barbaro's movie, and they are just fantastic. You've got two hot people with chemistry being funny together, it's the golden equation and it works wonders here.
Aside from the two leads, the other clear draw here is the premise. I was already excited by this idea of The Purge but with sex instead of crime, but I was surprised by how well the premise was handled. There are a long list of questions to be asked about how this sex ban works, and pretty much everything I was curious about is answered in an organic way. This easily could have fallen into scenes riddled with exposition, but we are introduced to the general idea via title cards at the very beginning, then have all the little details sprinkled in as the film goes on. This allows the story to not get hung up on the semantics of this fictionalized America and instead allow the relationship between our two leads and their night of hijinks carry the film. The world feels so lived in by the end that you almost forget that this is all made up, taking the fun premise but using it as a vessel to tell the story of Owen and Ally rather than the gimmick being the main draw.
On top of the great premise and terrific duo at the heart of this, One Night Only is just a fun movie. You definitely know where things will go but that's part of the charm of this kind of movie. You get a ton of laughs, a duo with great chemistry, and a soundtrack that everyone will have on repeat. There aren't many movies more perfect for the summer than this. 4/5
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