If you like meet-cute romantic comedies (a style of movies that I don’t feel come along in mainstream cinema a lot these days), check out our reaction to One Night Only, now playing in cinemas.
About: Academy Award® nominee Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown, Top Gun: Maverick) and BAFTA nominee Callum Turner (Masters of the Air, Fantastic Beasts franchise) star as Allie and Owen, two love-starved strangers who crash into each other in an ever-so-slightly fictionalized New York City on the one night of the year when single people are allowed to have sex. Recently dumped Owen and hopeful romantic Allie might be the only two singles in the city looking for more than just a quick encounter. They both feel a spark when they meet, but a series of missteps and side quests complicate their night, keeping them apart. As they each race toward and away from each other across the city, they just might discover that the one thing they want most is closer than they think.
Reaction: Sometimes it’s okay to have a really predictable rom-com with a lot of meet cutes, as long as the two leads are cute enough. In the case of One Night Only it’s the likeable Monica Barbara (Top Gun: Maverick & A Complete Unknown fame) and Callum Turner, who was a highlight of last year’s Toronto International Film Festival with Eternity & Rose of Nevada and both actors are on the rise at the moment.
I quite liked the setup, where there’s a federal mandate that has been running over three years where no one can have sex unless they are married. Everyone is chipped on their arm, so any indication that the rules have broken will immediately have the police after them. Since this appears to only be a United States law, I wonder if there are similar rules in my country of Canada, and also how many people would have migrated either here or even south in retaliation.
But I digress. This is mostly the story of Owen (Turner) who owns a pizzeria, and Allie (Barbara) who sings cover tunes that are remixed into jingles for feminine products. They have a meet cute after meet cute and seem to just randomly run into each other….in New York City, a massive city with over nine million people. Oh, the movies.
Throughout, they keep running into each other and not at one point do they exchange digits or even an Instagram follow, so the movie makes them both run lengths to find each other while other romantic interests get in the way during the pause of the mandate. I feel like this actual mandate is lightly explored but there are a few scenes with news anchors reporting on the 12 hour break, and there where some random characters do explain the actual rules. My personal favourite was Nicholas Braun talking to Allie about the mandate, mostly because he just recently had sheep help him solve a crime in The Sheep Detectives as the smartest man in the room.
There are some very predictable turns here and as someone who has seen his fair share of romantic comedies, I could telegraph a lot of the goings on. Of course, there are going to be romantic interests that deviate from our two leads, and a series of wacky events that will lead us together. Of course, there are going to be lines of dialogue that are going to foreshadow where a character needs to go. Of course, there are going to be even more wacky pursuits like our leads trying to find the last condom and trying every bodega in New York. This whole movie is full of “of course” moments.
With all of that said, it still works thanks to the romantic connection between Barbara and Turner, and filmmaker Will Gluck (forever a fan of his for Easy A and more recently the breakout hit Anyone But You) also has a lot of fun with his side characters, featuring funny if brief performances by Molly Ringwald as Owen’s mom and LeVar Burton as her love interest as two great examples. And on the music front, he even cast the likes of King Princess as a close friend and the always welcome Este Haim from the Haim sisters in a fun cameo running the front of house as a party. Este Haim also helped provide the fun and lighthearted music score.
One Night Only isn’t going to break the mold and it doesn’t hit as strong as Will Gluck’s earlier works, but for a fun date night out at the movies this will more than do the job. I also feel like we don’t see a lot of these types of movies in cinemas anymore, and I want to support the fact these types of movies need to not just be released on a streaming service first and instead be sent to the big screen where they belong.
Rating: 7 out of 10
ONE NIGHT ONLY is now playing in theaters. Our thanks to Universal Pictures for doing an early access screening for this movie ahead of its release!