One Night Only
Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro provide an Affair to Remember in a chucklesome, touching, wildly entertaining romcom set in a sexually prescribed future.
Nocturnal appetites: Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner
Photo by Nicole Rivelli, courtesy of Universal Pictures.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
It’s not about the sex, but if you take it away… Three years ago, US Congress made extramarital sex illegal, enforced by a bio-sensitive marker tattooed on the wrist. The US has become a fascist state and being an incel now carries a badge of honour. However, in order to placate an increasingly horny populace, twelve hours a year have been set aside for a free-for-all. For pizzeria owner Owen (Callum Turner), it’s the perfect night to propose to his girlfriend Malika (Maya Hawke), so he takes her out to a fancy sushi restaurant before the allotted twelve hours of permissible rumpy-pumpy. But Malika has other ideas and leaves Owen alone on the sexually hottest night of the year. Not that female heads aren’t constantly turning in his direction, he’s just not the type for commitment-free coitus. Then he literally bumps into Allie (Monica Barbaro) on the street, before a combination of disappointment and sushi prompts him to vomit over her. Allie is disgusted, although she’s looking for a sexual partner herself, after her girlfriend (King Princess) abandoned her at a bar…
As romcoms go, One Night Only ticks a lot of boxes: it’s original, smart, sassy, sexy, cine-literate, moving, funny and joyful. One scene alone is so good that it could merit being turned into a short, with an appropriate title of, say, The Last Condom in New York City. As Allie and Owen, Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner turn in star-making performances, their chemistry powering the action through its innumerable, eyebrow-raising convolutions. And when zero hour finally kicks off, New York is transformed into a tsunami of seething hormonal abandonment as couples in restaurants, cars and even on the subway get it on.
Often the sign of a good comedy is the humour bubbling around in the background, and here the street signs and billboards make for consistently good value, from a shot of the Statue of Liberty adorned with a chastity belt to a placard outside a shop advertising an AI Massage for one night only. The mind boggles. A knowledge of the cinema should add to one’s enjoyment of the whole, as various classics are referenced, along with the director Will Gluck’s own back catalogue (Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney, the stars of his last film, Anyone But You, pop up in photographic cameos).
We think we know the inevitable outcome of this anti-romance, but the scripter Travis Braun, while borrowing from many of the tropes of the genre, has something more profound to say. Partly a valentine to New York and partly a sex comedy in an increasingly puritan age, One Night Only feels fresh, relevant and grown-up. But it’s the interaction between the stars that makes it all so enjoyable, while a stellar supporting cast adds genuine flavour. Who thought we would see the day when a 58-year-old Molly Ringwald was caught in a sex act wrapped entirely in bubble wrap? Or when the making of a pizza could hold such an erotic charge? One Night Only is The Purge for romantic diehards and it will be a strange sight for Dua Lipa and Andrew Garfield to rest their eyes on this loved-up couple as they are, respectively, the real-life partners of Turner and Barbaro.
Cast: Monica Barbaro, Callum Turner, Maya Hawke, Julia Fox, Molly Ringwald, LeVar Burton, Charlie Gillespie, Michelle Hurd, King Princess, Quintessa Swindell, Andrew Burnap, Okieriete Onaodowan, Ben Marshall, Nicholas Braun, Pete Davidson, Bobby Cannavale, Sydney Cole Alexander, William Franke, Yan Cui, Ella Loudon, Mateo Ray, Keizo Kaji, Este Haim, Ziwe, Radio Man, Flavor Flav, Roma Maffia.
Dir Will Gluck, Pro Will Gluck and Jacqueline Monetta, Screenplay Travis Braun, Ph Yaron Orbach, Pro Des Scott Kuzio, Ed Tia Nolan, Music Este Haim and Christopher Stracey, Costumes Jacqueline Demeterio, Dialect coach Brett Tyne.
Olive Bridge Entertainment-Universal Pictures.
102 mins. USA. 2026. US Rel: 7 August 2026. UK Rel: 28 August 2026. Cert. 15.
