Either you’ve seen the statistics or you’re living them: Millennials and members of Gen Z are having less sex than previous generations did. The reasons aren’t exactly clear—economic insecurity, coupled with after-effects of the pandemic, may have something to do with it—but anecdotally, at least, the trend is real. What if, God forbid, a fascist government decreed that unmarried people could have sex on just one night of the year? Would that shift anything in the way young people think about coupling, for a night or a lifetime? And would it make them long for freedom they can’t have?
Those are some of the questions posed by Will Gluck’s preposterous and delightful romantic comedy One Night Only, set in a dystopian present where the government controls when and how unmarried people can have sex: It has to be on one designated night of the year, and using protection is a requirement. The nuts and bolts of the premise don’t matter much: presumably, this fictitious government thinks it’s promoting so-called family values, though its more nefarious aim may be to deprive its citizens of freedom and joy. The point is that on just one night a year, all the singles go crazy. The women put on their tiniest, sparkliest dresses and highest heels and head out, looking for romance or at least just a tumble. Then men spruce up a bit too, or at least put on a clean shirt, and though some have honorable intentions, there are others who maintain strict schedules so they can pack multiple conquests into a night. Men will be men—or at least some of them will be.
As you can imagine, this specified “one night” would be especially mad in a city like New York, where people are often a little nuts to begin with, and that’s where One Night Only takes place. Owen (Callum Turner, rendering a reasonably believable American accent) runs a pizza joint, and he’s getting ready to close up shop as this special 12-hour night is set to begin. He’s not married, but he does have a girlfriend (played by Maya Hawke), who informs him, when they meet up for their date, that she wants to use this one free night of premarital sex to sleep with someone else. Owen is crestfallen. But he also figures he may as well try his own luck. That’s how he runs into Allie (Monica Barbaro), also on her own. She’s had a tough workday—she’s a singer, and she’s been toiling in the studio, recording a schmaltzy jingle for a psoriasis commercial—and her evening plans have fallen through: the pal she was set to go out with, Jacinta (King Princess), found herself a literal prince in the early hours of the evening and has taken off. Allie’s roommate (Quintessa Swindell), who happens to be gay and has no interest in these one-night-only shenanigans (“We’ve been dancing around your laws since before the Bible,” they explain, suggesting that the city’s gay population has pretty much ignored the premarital-sex ban altogether), urges her to make the most of the evening, kitting her out in a fetching, if minuscule, green sequined dress left behind by an ex-girlfriend. In this splendid and very hot outfit, completed with spindly heeled sandals, Allie reluctantly toddles off into the night to join her glimmering, mini-skirted sisters. On this night, New York has become a city of stems.
Allie and Owen run into each other early on, and the sparks fly, but only until Owen—who downed two quick kamikazes in the wake of his girlfriend’s announcement—nearly barfs all over Allie’s dainty shoes. She’s disgusted. They part ways, only to be serendipitously reunited several times as the evening progresses. After being propositioned by one loser after another in a swanky bar, Allie meets a gorgeous charmer (Andrew Burnap) whose apartment is decked out with an original Banksy, and maybe a Basquiat; Owen swipes right on a cutie who lures him from somewhere in Manhattan to Brooklyn Bridge Park—he jumps on a CitiBike and pedals like crazy to get there. Both of these assignations fall through, and somehow, Allie and Owen keep finding themselves thrown together. Their loathing for one another grows. They jab at one another endlessly. You can see where this is headed.
Obtaining contraception requires Herculean effort —Courtesy of UniversalThe script, by Travis Braun, makes the most of the story’s intentionally absurd premise. As you can imagine, condoms are a hot commodity on this magical night: in one scene, the city’s last remaining prophylactic becomes an object akin to Indiana Jones’ Ark of the Covenant. Housed in its own Plexiglass pyramid and guarded by two golden mannequins, it serves as the glowing center of one of the movie’s goofiest sight gags. And Gluck, whose last film was the 2023 Glen Powell-Sidney Sweeney vehicle Anyone But You, has the benefit of two appealing co-stars here. The movie knows that Owen, although a decent guy—and certainly hot, in that show-offy, gym-guy way—is a bit of a goober: Turner goes along with that idea amiably, and even the rather boring polo shirt he’s wearing—which becomes fodder for one of the movie’s great punchlines—is such a stark contrast to Allie’s glittering stunner of a dress that you almost believe he’s not good enough for her. Really, he’s perfectly OK. The problem may be that Allie, as Barbaro plays her, is off-the-charts enchanting. Barbaro—who was superb as Joan Baez in James Mangold’s 2024 Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown—knows how to land a zinger and make it feel like a kiss blown from across the room. With her shy, slow-burning smile, she carries echoes of Natalie Wood. When the movie threatens to sag, she’s the one holding it aloft.
But she’s not the only unassuming superstar in One Night Only. This is a great New York movie, one that captures all the beauty and dumb grit of this fantastic, weird city. On this night of all nights, the youngsters at play aren’t just piling into Ubers like spoiled rich kids. They’re actually riding the subway, as broke young people continue to do, and the stations look to have been only just slightly spruced up for their big closeups—you won’t see any Pizza Rats, but you might notice a stray gum wrapper here or there. The movie also makes great use of some the city's underrepresented landmarks, like Washington Heights' adorable Little Red Lighthouse, made famous by Hildegarde Swift’s 1947 children’s book The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. It all seems too good to be true—but it isn't. One Night Only gives us a New York that’s only a semi-fantasy, a place where, even in the face of encroaching corporate chains, you can still see small, independently owned restaurants announcing their presence with the warmth of a neon sign. It’s true that, in real life, these spots are disappearing. But so many of them hang on, in a city that, against all odds, continues to hang on to everything human and real and perhaps just a bit crazy. One Night Only still believes in the glorious unpredictability of New York, just as it believes in love and freedom and the joy and messiness of amorous adventures. It’s a movie extolling the pleasures of sex and the city, in that order.
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