R | 1h 42m | Rom-Com | 2026
“One Night Only” is both rather fun and also exceedingly stupid. Cut to the chase—Monica Barbaro (“Top Gun 2: Maverick,” “A Complete Unknown”) is solely responsible for making this silly rom-com fly.
Director Will Gluck casts Barbaro as gorgeous-but-unlucky-in-love Allie, alongside Malika (Maya Hawke), who plays the fickle girlfriend of straight-shooting, faithful Owen (Callum Turner), a pizzeria owner.
I was pleasantly surprised to find “One Night Only” fairly funny, with a believable romantic chemistry between the two leads, and an exceptional amount of adorableness from Barbaro. What more can you ask from a rom-com? That it be much, much better? It actually could have been; it could have been a real contender in the rom-com pantheon.
It falls short because Will Gluck wasn’t the right director for this, and Callum, who’s being considered as the next James Bond—because he’d absolutely own Bond—is slightly miscast here.
Again, the premise is entirely stupid, also more than a little bit gross, and the whole thing is politically dystopian.
Nutty Premise
The bizarre hypothesis of “One Night Only” is that the American government has forcibly returned the country to its puritanical roots. How? While Uncle Sam would have preferred to go full-on “Handmaid’s Tale,” that wouldn’t have flown in the swing states, so the U.S. of A. settled for simply outlawing premarital sex. We don’t get any kind of an explanation as to why this mandate was put into place; one can only assume population control.
However! For one night a year, it’s legal to go hog wild à la “The Purge.” In that stupid movie, for one night only, you get to kill people. So, for this one night only, of permissible sex, protection is required for 12 hours.
How is it all enforced? High-tech surveillance and law enforcement. Upon turning 18, every citizen is fitted with a specialized, government-issue biosensor—a trackable tattoo that detects when two unmarried individuals’ tats are in close physical proximity to each other. The tattoo glows red for 364 days of the year and then switches to green during the authorized 12-hour “Sex Purge” window. Lovely.
The 12-hour prophylactics-requirement derives a smidgen of condom-comedy by following that premise to its logical conclusions. Such as a fetch-quest that sees not-quite-star-crossed-lovers (at least not yet) Allie and Owen scrambling, amid city-wide bedlam (and outrageous price gouging), to locate even a solitary piece of inventory, regarding this suddenly hot commodity.
The Leads
Owen’s a good guy. His deeply romantic nature has him planning to use American’s legal “One Night” to propose to his girlfriend. However, some women tend to not go for good guys. Malika is planning on doing some bad-boy sampling, and, before he can fish out the engagement ring, she invites Owen to enjoy his freedom—it’ll be “good for” him, she says, encouragingly. So, heartbroken, he halfheartedly heads out to attempt to have some fun.
Owen runs into Allie, reluctantly out and about, herself, in her barely-there, micro-miniskirt (supplied by her roommate) with stunning “legs that make no sense.” They run into each other repeatedly over the course of the night.
Unfortunately, the first time, the combo of alcohol, expensive shellfish-based appetizers, and severe rejection catch up with Owen’s stomach. Allie may be single, sad, and disillusioned but she’s certainly not settling for some dork who pukes on her shoes.
However, she is looking for a romantic, good guy. She keeps meeting unappealing betas who know they’ve got a shot on this particular night. She meets a card-trick magician, the guy whose company invented the tech that tracks sex, and a sweet-talking criminal. She falls for the last one until his creeping criminality becomes impossible to ignore.
In between all the other fiascoes, she keeps randomly bumping into Owen. Like in the police station, where he’s just been rescued from getting zip-tied to a tree and ripped off in the park, by a potential “date.”
Will They, Won’t They?
The will-they-won’t-they, string-the-audience-along plot-device has been around since “It Happened One Night” (1934), and it still works. Director Will Gluck also has lots of recent success putting beautiful couples together—Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake in “Friends with Benefits” (2011) and Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell in “Anyone but You” (2023).
Barbaro does a great job portraying someone who’s got beauty and talent but lacks self-confidence. Watching Barbaro’s character arc of stepping into her full range of kindness, humor, and musical talent is delightful.
On the other hand, the normally taciturn, hunky, James-Bond-y, British Turner, admirably using an American accent to play Owen, who’s a bit clueless about women—is a slightly harder sell. Turner manages to pull it off, but there’s just enough cringe to remind one of why longtime star Josh Brolin calls acting “a profession of embarrassment.”
The plot is totally out there, and, if you didn’t have these two actors bringing a believable, largely straightforward romance to the screen, everything would’ve quickly gone off the rails. Barbaro and Turner manage to create something real on a nonsensical night.
“One Night Only” released in theaters in the United States and Canada on Aug. 7, 2026.
‘One Night Only’
Director: Will Gluck
Starring: Calum Turner, Monica Barbaro, Maya Hawke, numerous cameos
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hours, 42 minutes
Release Date: Aug. 7, 2026
Rating: 3 1/2 stars out of 5
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