Crew
Director – Will Gluck, Screenplay – Travis Braun, Producers – Will Gluck & Jacqueline Monetta, Photography – Yaron Orbach, Music – Este Haim & Christopher Stracy, Visual Effects – Folks (Supervisor – Dulany Foster), Special Effects Supervisor – Dustin Riedman, Production Design – Scott Kuzio. Production Company – Olive Bridge Entertainment.
Cast
Callum Turner (Owen), Monica Barbaro (Allie), Molly Ringwald (Linda), Maya Hawke (Malika), LeVar Burton (Rick), Quintessa Swindell (Ava), Jake Bakirdan (Harrison Hecklebone), King Princess (Jacinta), Mateo Ray (Troy), Charles Gillespie (Ezra Strong), Michelle Hurd (Detective Vanessa BryanBrown), Julia Fox (Skye), Nicholas Braun (Woodrow K. Mullhand), Sydney Cole Alexander (Danica), BlueDeTiger (Herself), Okieriete Onaodowan (Prince Tejan), Frank Pando (Uncle Ed), Zuleyma Guevara (Aunt Ana), Daniel Roy (Jonathan “Magician” Payne), Roma Maffia (Miranda Skyler), Bobby Cannavale (Detective Sannogale), Pete Davidson (Detective Jeterson)
Plot
US Congress has passed The Mandate that outlaws premarital sex. The only exemption is one night only per year where it is lawful to have sex. This ends up with a mad rush as everybody races to hook up. Manhattan pizzeria owner Owen closes up and goes off to spend the night with his girlfriend Malika – only for her to inform him that she has decided she wants to be with their landlord instead. He wanders dejected looking for someone else. At the same time, jingle singer Allie tries to find someone to spend the evening with, but all her opportunities bottom out. The two meet but Owen blows his chance when he throws up in front of her. Throughout the course of the night as they meet others, circumstances keep bringing the two back together.
One Night Only is a Romantic Comedy. The bizarreness of its premise is that it also takes place in a Dystopia where premarital sex is outlawed and only made legal for one day per year. Screenwriter Travis Braun had only worked as a creator of animated tv series for the single digit groups before this with T.O.T.S. (2019-22) and Pupstruction (2023- ). Braun says that he had originally conceived the film as “The Purge (2013) but for sex.”
Braun’s original version of the film was voted #1 on the Black List for unproduced screenplays in 2024. In Braun’s original version of the screenplay, which differs quite a bit from the finished film, the backdrop was a much grittier dystopia. Enter Will Gluck who began as a producer of light sitcoms and began to direct with romantic comedies such as Easy A (2010), Friends With Benefits (2011) and Anyone But You (2023), as well as the disliked remake of Annie (2014). Gluck is remembered here for Peter Rabbit (2018), the astonishingly bad adaptation of Beatrix Potetr’s talking animal stories, and its sequel Peter Rabbit 2/Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway (2021).
With Gluck on board the project, what had started as a gritty dystopian work about a world where sex is outlawed has ended up turned into a Romantic Comedy, the sort of film that Gluck was familiar making. At reading some of the behind-the-scenes story about the film’s transition, I couldn’t help but think that the idea of a world where sex is outlawed and a romantic comedy are two premises that are mutually incompatible – it’s probably possible to have an entirely chaste romance but the whole idea of two people getting together and having sex premise has to be lurking somewhere not far beneath any romance, even if it is only left implied by the usual fade to black.
Not to mention, this is something that leaves One Night Only with a fundamentally implausible premise. I find it almost impossible to believe that US Congress could pass a law where premarital sex is outlawed. Not unless maybe the country had undergone some kind of theocratic dictatorship not unlike the world of Escape from L.A. (1996) – but there is no evidence from the street scenes we see that the USA is any different from normal. Certainly, it is worth noting that there are several countries in the real world where premarital sex is outlawed such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia and other Islamic countries where breaking the law can in some cases be punishable by death. However, it is worth looking at the differences between the real-life societies and the fictional one portrayed here – in the real-world cases, the theocratic regime is absolute in its dictates ie. there is no once per year hall pass allowed where premarital sex is suddenly legal for one night only.
To its credit, One Night Only does dwell in its background on some of the details of this – how the LGBT community might consider itself oppressed under such a law; the mad rush to find a partner on the one night allowable; the commercial industry of products that emerges around the event. On the other hand, there are a great many aspects that make no sense at all – such as Callum Turner and Maya Hawke living together as boyfriend/girlfriend. I fail to believe that two couples could maintain such a cohabitative relationship and not be tempted to break the law. Or questions like what would happen if couples left the country? Would there not be a massive uptick in so-called sex tourism to countries that don’t have The Mandate?
It is also a very male-centric view of sex that One Night Only endorses. Forgive me if I am generalising about the genders here, but it is my observation that men and women have very differing attitudes towards when they are first ready to have sex with someone. For a guy, it more like “she’s hot, quick let’s go,” whereas women tend to want to get to know someone first. (Not always a hard and fast rule and there are plenty of exceptions). This is a film firmly centred in the guy’s perspective where ALL the couples are ones that fall into “You’ll do, let’s get naked ASAP” category.
That is, except for the ending where the film abruptly switches these outlooks. Here Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro finally come together and seem on the verge of doing the deed whereupon Callum abruptly decides “Maybe we should wait. Get to know each other. Without the pressure, without all the noise. A whole year.” SAID NO GUY EVER when faced with the opportunity of having sex (with someone they find attractive). It’s the film suddenly subverting the entire message it has built up to and tossing into the ring the absurd pro-chastity message “Maybe we should wait until we are married” that the Twilight series promulgated.
One Night Only is a slick and well produced film. It also has a surprising line-up of well-known names in the cast. The most eye-opening of these is former teenage star Molly Ringwald as Callum Turner’s mother, hooking up with LeVar Burton, Geordie from Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-94), with Callum later coming home to find the two engaged in some bubble wrap kink. Lead actress Monica Barbaro didn’t engage me as anything other than another generic Hollywood face. However, Callum Turner has a wry, everyday likeability that is way above and beyond the call of the material at hand. It is just that the fundamental implausibility of the premise kills all of the potential dead.
Trailer here