Don’t let them tell you that the romantic comedy is dead. At least, not when it comes to One Night Only. The new Will Gluck film, with a script by Travis Braun, asks audiences one important question: Can you find love during the sex purge?
Allie (Monica Barbaro) is a young woman who finds herself single amidst the government’s new ruling against pre-martial sex. Every unmarried citizen has to have a biometric sensor in their arm that tracks their levels and lets the government know if you broke their rule. But on one night a year, singles and unmarried couples are allowed to have sex. Our story starts on that one night a year.
Allie is trying to go out with her friend and is left abandoned. On the other side of town, Owen (Callum Turner) is getting left alone for the night after his girlfriend (Maya Hawke) tells him that she wants to sleep with their neighbor (which ends up being a hilarious joke referencing Gluck’s last film, Anyone But You). And through their unlikely circumstances, Owen and Allie spend a lot of their one night of freedom basically running into each other repeatedly.
There is a lot of disbelief you have to leave at the door for One Night Only but the minute you engage with this movie with an open heart, you will find that the raunchy romantic comedies of the 90s and early 00s are alive and well in Gluck and Braun’s New York love affair. From cheesy songs to locations in New York that are not fast to get to, there is a lot of One Night Only that only works because you’re infatuated by Allie and Owen and frankly, that’s what makes it so much fun.
There are some questions about this ruling
The explanation for why it is a one night only event happens with a fake Lindsey Graham type of political figure in a news segment. He says it is to stop pre-martial sex and then later, Owen kind of proves the point by saying a lot of his friends are no longer single because they couldn’t handle the no sex rule. So his friend group all got married off.
But there are signs to what is and isn’t legal. Allie is in front of a board that has said activities listed behind her and it just really makes it clear that you can work around the laws if you were really that desperate. But that’s maybe why Allie and Owen work as leads of a film like this: Neither seem to care a lot about the ruling. They’re two romantics at heart.
The film quite literally starts with Owen trying to be a great boyfriend and Allie trying to find her prince on a night where many are only out for sex. And yes, the two find themselves in sex forward antics that are hilarious but it is made clear to the audience that neither of their hearts are really in it. They’d much rather find love in a very hopeless place.
One Night Only felt like a beautiful relic of the past. Like the kind of romantic movie you’d watch as a kid and fall in love with the genre over. To have that in 2026 feels like a gift and Gluck and Braun made something special with this outrageous and beautiful premise.
One Night Only is in theaters on August 7.
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