One Night Only

Grade: D

To fix One Night Only, I’d keep stars Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro, and replace literally everything else. I like them both very much, but they are sadly dead in the water in one of the most annoying and unfunny movies of the year. It’s not played like a fantasy, yet the laughably absurd main plot point is brought up as a premise, and we’re supposed to accept it without thinking twice. That’s triple the amount of thinking that apparently came from the writer.

I’ll explain it, and try to contain myself. We learn, through opening text, that for the last three years, the United States has been under what’s called a Chastity Mandate. Premarital sex is outlawed, except during a 12-hour window once a year. It specifically says “premarital sex,” which leaves too much open. What about extramarital sex? If you’re already married, can you cheat during those 12 hours? What if you are divorced or widowed? Would anything you do be considered premarital, or are you covered, so to speak?

But ok, I’ll ignore those questions. The screenwriter obviously did. When is this annual “anything goes” window? Valentine’s Day would be good. I bet it’s February 14th, right? Nope. August 7th, from 7:00 pm to 7:00 am on August 8th. Oh, I’m not done. There’s more. Everyone in New York City (where it’s set) has a tattoo (it looks more like a stamp) on their left wrist. It’s red most of the time, but during these 12 hours, it turns green. If you’re married, it’s always green. I thought of another question. What if you GET married? Do you have to make an appointment at the courthouse to “go green?”

All of this has the potential for wicked political satire, on which the film fails to capitalize. The government is telling people what they can and can’t do with their bodies. That could have made for some intriguing dialogue, but it’s only used as a flimsy premise for an intellectually bankrupt romantic comedy. It doesn’t even lean into the fantasticality of it all. It’s treated like a perfectly normal thing.

It’s all anyone talks about. Countdown clocks are all over the city. Flavor Flav rings in the beginning of the exemption window, where immediately, extras start making out, removing clothes, and doing heavy petting anywhere and everywhere. I guess public indecency charges don’t apply. I could say more, but I’ll get out of the rabbit hole and talk about the rest of One Night Only.

There’s not much to it. Monica Barbaro plays Allie, who is a professional singer for commercial jingles that feature pop songs with the lyrics slightly rewritten to sell a product. Callum Turner is Owen, who owns a pizza place, and is taking the evening off to be intimate with his girlfriend (Maya Hawke) while it’s legal. He quickly finds he’s on his own, after she tells him she wants to hook up with someone else that night.

The rest of the movie is a madcap farce to keep Allie and Owen away from each other for most of the runtime, until they inevitably do connect. It feels like they had jokes first, and then wrote a movie around them. There’s an early line, when they’re trading insults, about how Allie’s legs “don’t make any sense,” that is introduced so it can be brought up later when he’s searching the city for her. “Have you seen a woman around? Short-haired brunette? Her legs don’t make any sense?” No points for guessing whether they do find each other in the sprawling city, and whether it involves a character saying “there was a guy looking for you a little while ago.”

The film either dishes out jokes that are forced and don’t land, or you can feel it riffing and killing time, like when it stops to have Allie sing a song in public, when she has previously been too shy. Or all the moments when one of them is about to do the deed with someone other than their co-star, and we impatiently wait for the thing to come along that will stop it from happening. Oddly, one of the movie’s better jokes was left in the trailer. During their meet-cute conversation at the pizza place, Allie says the famous romcom line “Oh, come on!” and, while she’s still saying it, Owen joins in and says it with her. It’s a small moment, but it’s a clever acknowledgment of the genre, and it would have brought some organic life to a scene that desperately needs it. Instead, it was cut.

Turner and Barbaro are attractive, appealing presences, and are born for a great screwball romcom. This isn’t it. One Night Only resembles Owen’s opinion of Allie’s legs.

The movie opens today, August 7th. It’s almost 7:00.

Grade: D