- Title: One Night Only
- IMDb: link
Like many romcoms, One Night Only gets a bit too cute for its own good. Set in an alternate reality where premarital sex has been outlawed except for one night a year, we get a glut of horny singles hitting on anything that moves. As far as a setup goes it’s not too bad, although the method by which the government tracks those having sex will clue you in on the kind of “logic” screenwriter Travis Braun‘s script will follow.
Our two stars are Callum Turner as a pizza shop owner whose girlfriend (Maya Hawke) decides she wants to sleep with someone else, and suggests he do the same, and Monica Barbaro as a quirky singer for the jingles for “funny” medicine commercials. The two cross paths multiple times over the course of the night, always choosing, or chasing, someone else.
After a series of disasters, eventually the pair end up together in his pizza shop (as shown in the trailer) which is, of course, the perfect culmination and conclusion to the film. Instead, for some odd reason, possibly because the movie hadn’t hit its quota of inane romcom moments, we get another 10-15 minutes of inanity before the film eventually, mercifully, allows this misadventure to end.
There are moments, fleeting as they may be, where the two stars attempt to elevate the film as something more than a never-ending string of cheap gags and romantic misfortune. Had the film focused more on real moments between characters, like it eventually offers in the pizza shop scene (which almost feels like it belongs in an entirely different movie), rather than jerking us around with romcom tropes for more than 100 minutes, the end result would be far less disappointing.
From time to time director Will Gluck does throw in ideas that are either underutilized or just completely discarded such as Barbaro daydreaming how events should be going (which is only done a couple of times in the film despite the never-ending disappointment the night offers, and, most importantly, isn’t used as character development in the film’s most critical scene). Although One Night Only is filled with other actors, none of the supporting characters or cameos are anything more than distractions to our two core characters who are just too stupid to figure out who they should be with.
Not quite a sex comedy, not quite a romance, One Night Only fits best in the crazy night subgenre (although even there it eventually disqualifies itself by its tacked on extra scenes). Barbaro and Turner are charming, and they have to be, in order to keep this lead balloon of a concept afloat. However, eventually there’s just too much pushing against them, the pair capsize, and the movie never really recovers.
