One Night Only

“Sparks indeed fly and the film becomes an equal parts comedy as the desperate search for consummation leads Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner into several sticky situations.”

“Director Will Gluck has spent years proving he knows how to give this genre a fun, modern facelift. This time around, though, he's taking that winning formula somewhere much stranger. It's a completely unhinged setup, but you have to admit: it's an absolute goldmine for messy romance, biting satire, and some serious laughs.”

“One Night Only is silly, chaotic and occasionally overstuffed, but it is also surprisingly charming. It makes you chuckle, it makes you cackle, and every once in a while, it catches you completely off guard.”

“One Night Only is a breezy romantic comedy powered by Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner's natural chemistry. The film is a sweet, fast-paced and enjoyable date-night watch.”

“One Night Only works best when it stops worrying about what its premise might mean and simply enjoys how crazy it is. The result is entertaining, with the film's energy difficult to resist, particularly when Barbaro and Turner are sharing the screen. As a silly, fast-moving and self-aware rom-com, it delivers plenty of laughs and chemistry to make the watch worthwhile.”

“Romantic comedies rarely reach theaters these days, which makes it that much more unfortunate that the ones that do feel like sitcoms.”

“Will Gluck uses it primarily as a playground for a glossy, feel-good romance, and the result is funny enough to keep things moving even when the story itself starts to fall apart.”

“But right at the "decent rom-com" finish line, One Night Only hands its audience a studio note from the Production Code era: Knock out that sex business, it gets in the way of love! The movie's baffling anti-sex ending contradicts how the government's restriction of sex drives society to literal horny jail. One Night Only feels like a youth group lecture where the pastor warns of hookup culture on college campuses, a feature-length studio note from an executive afraid the movie won't go over well in the Bible Belt.”

“Will Gluck's 'One Night Only' is a dystopian romcom that, despite the best efforts of Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro, is too creepy to be cute.”

“One Night Only takes a wildly bizarre premise and turns it into a refreshingly funny, charming rom-com. With sharp humour, a playful will-they-won't-they romance, chaotic twists and perfectly timed cameos, the film keeps things light and entertaining.”

“The film is the ungainly result of a four-cocktails-in elevator pitch which imagines a world where single people are only legally allowed to have sex on one night of the year... an overstuffed yet undercooked soufflé that can't quite, ahem, rise to the occasion. Instead, One Night Only weirdly plays like lulling government propaganda, a film about sex purge to be released in time for sex purge that says that actually maybe sex purge is a good idea after all.”

“If this is what it takes to get a rom-com greenlit these days, maybe we should just let them die. Death with dignity is surely a better fate for the genre than fascist capitulation.”

“Will Gluck's film imagines an America where premarital sex has been outlawed, except for a government-sanctioned 12-hour window once a year. But its strangest choice is not that it imagines a prudish America — it's that Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro's chemistry has nowhere to go in this setup.”

“The pairing of Turner, showing an appealing aw-shucks goofy side to offset his studly swagger, and the incandescent Barbaro, finally landing a role that builds on her enormous promise in A Complete Unknown, makes One Night Only Gluck's best film since the 2010 Emma Stone teen comedy, Easy A. Mostly it's the effortless appeal of Barbaro and Turner as hopeless romantics on a night dedicated to instant carnal gratification that keeps the movie motoring along, even when Braun's screenplay is at its most effortful.”

“One Night Only merely wants to reignite the memory of those light-hearted dramas, where the stakes don't guide the fate of a relationship. But the film needs more charm than it ultimately receives from Gluck's tried-and-tested approach, which seems to compensate for the excessive dose of biology with an absence of chemistry between the leads.”

“One Night Only comes at a time of increased surveillance and policing of sexual expression on the internet. And in the movie, totalitarianism is played for laughs... One Night Only adheres to our rising purity culture; it doesn't defy it.”