Many of us can agree that 2026 has been a dark year, and the sights ahead only look dimmer. War, starvation, deportation, rising cost of living, a strained job market, compromised journalism — these are all concerns affecting us one way or another, with little promise of much better. If we cannot count on the systems that create these horrifying conditions, we must count on each other to fight for something better. Enter the Sex Purge Movie — sorry, Universal Pictures’ blandly titled One Night Only — a film courageous enough to address our current state of affairs. From the mind that gave us Disney Junior’s “T.O.T.S.” and “Pupstruction,” and the director of the upcoming adaptation of the Just Dance video game series, comes a movie that dares to challenge the status quo with the brave proclamation: save yourself for someone special.
Perhaps it’s too harsh to put down a romantic comedy for its politics, especially one as knowing about the insanity of its premise as One Night Only, but none of its self-awareness stops it from repeatedly invoking the threat of fascism. It’s weird, unnecessary, and makes a movie that would otherwise be occasionally amusing and often sweet into a malevolent piece of agitprop.
For the uninitiated, One Night Only is a bit of speculative fiction wherein the United States has criminalized premarital sex, except for one 12-hour period a year (thus, “the Sex Purge Movie”). We follow two protagonists on one such day three years after the mandate was passed: Owen (Callum Turner), a salt-of-the-Earth pizza-slinging romantic planning to propose to his girlfriend (played thanklessly by Maya Hawke), and Allie (Monica Barbaro, the sole source of charisma and joy in the movie), a singer who hopes this is the day she’ll meet her special someone. Owen’s girlfriend reveals she plans to use the evening to sleep with someone else and encourages him to do the same, so that he can “get out of his box.” As he tries to fulfill this mission, he keeps running into Allie, and a meet cute gone wrong turns into commiseration over caring about love in a world that only cares about getting laid (the movie feels like intentional counterprogramming to I Want Your Sex). Even as they eventually play each other’s wingman, there’s an undeniable spark, and the question of whether they will act on it before the legal clock runs out drives their romantic tension.
Of course, there are logistical questions that come up — many of which have been posed online in reaction to the trailer, and many of which are answered by the movie. Every answer is more troubling than the last. How can the government possibly know whether you’re having premarital sex? Biotech that puts you in a registry and tracks your location, you silly goose. How strictly is it enforced? The NYPD has a whole division for non-SVU sex crimes. It’s serious enough that someone can even be put on parole. What about gay people? They’re used to being persecuted for having sex, so it’s fine, they’ve got it handled. Is there public opposition to the law? Yeah, there are protest signs, graffiti, even a whole anti-mandate concert!
But the thing is, our protagonists only half-heartedly take issue with the mandate. Owen has a resistance sign in his shop window, but there’s about as much conviction behind it as a “In this house, we believe…” yard ornament. Owen and Allie’s real issue with the mandate is the pressure to fit in with everyone else’s hangups around it. Their urges are there, but it just isn’t as important to them as settling down.
Look, One Night Only is a romantic comedy, not a sex comedy, and it’s reasonable to expect that the movie is going to be most interested in love. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is an outlandish and probably evil movie when you get into the gender politics of it all, but it’s a movie that knows it only needs to be smart in building memorable comedic set pieces and having a lead couple to root for — whose tension is kind of sexy, whose growing friendship is sweet, and whose backgrounds are well-established enough that we can understand how this relationship changes them. One Night Only has none of these attributes. It does, however, have enough product placement (Dunkin’ Donuts, Duolingo, Cuba vacations) to make you wonder why Universal didn’t work on an AMC-exclusive condom-shaped popcorn bucket.
Perhaps most frustrating, however, is that One Night Only is just fine. There are a few genuine laughs — the specifics of Allie’s work as a singer invoke a good chuckle and make one wonder why no one has done it before. The joke eventually outruns its mileage. There is a lot of effort in the production design — is Mayor Mamdani in on all of the use of city branding? — that unfortunately is not shot or edited in a way where you get to fully appreciate the visual jokes. The score is fun and avoids the pitfalls of sounding like a series of royalty-free tracks tagged #emotional, as in so many other contemporary romances. Monica Barbaro is sexy, charming, and gets to show off her vocals, reminding the viewer of when she had more to work with in A Complete Unknown. In other words, if you can put aside the bigger picture, Owen and Allie’s romance is sweet, and their Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist-esque odyssey across New York allows their dynamic to change at each new rendezvous.
That would maybe be enough if the movie wasn’t so set on ensuring you know its rules — and drawing parallels to the real-life conservatism dictating our lives. One Night Only wants to prove to you that it is aware of what’s going on in the world, and that inevitably makes its flimsy observations about the ills of modern dating all the more baffling. It wants to comment on a sex-obsessed society that does not presently exist. One Night Only misses the mark on why people are struggling to form connections, exhibiting a moral haughtiness that suggests the fault is in the individual for giving it away too soon. It’s not that the movie isn’t allowed to be silly, it’s just that it’s not at all good at it.
DIRECTOR: Will Gluck; CAST: Monica Barbaro, Callum Turner, Maya Hawke, Julia Fox, King Princess; DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures; IN THEATERS: August 7; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 42 min.
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