One Night Only is the first film to capture the daily sacrament of ambiguity and self-hate called “Hinge.” It’s a crowd-pleasing rom-com that spends less than 30 seconds on a dating app. Instead, Monica Barbaro (At Midnight; A Complete Unknown) and Callum Turner (Eternity; Emma) are hilariously forced by a conservative majority in Congress to participate in a helter-skelter-holiday dedicated to digital dating’s “would they/would I” mind trip — on the streets of New York City, for just one night.
Callum Turner as Owen in ONE NIGHT ONLY, directed by Will Gluck. Photo Credit: Nicole Rivelli/Universal Pictures. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
The film may have a high-concept premise, but the most impressive thing about the film is its confidence in the power of traditional rom-coms and the audiences who love them. Directed by genre veteran Will Gluck (Easy A; Anyone But You), newcomer and screenwriter Travis Braun penned a script that elegantly reduces the meet-cute to its nucleus: the potential lovers literally bump into each other on the street. A comedic misunderstanding turns the two strangers into rivals as they race across The Bronx and The Lower West Side in search of elusive bodega condoms so they can sleep with other people. Unmentioned in the marketing, condoms are also legally tracked and mandated in this film, and our disenchanted leads neglected to stock up before the condoms sold out city-wide.
“Does the Chef also recommend that my girlfriend fuck someone else tonight?”
He’s a type-A pizza maker, she’s a type-B singer, and they both want to repeal The Mandate.
The film begins with a title card announcing that it has been three years since pre-marital sex was banned in the USA and that “It’s been … a lot.” When the clock strikes sex o’clock, there is panic and fucking in the streets, sheets, cars, windows, and more. But our star-crossed-haters aren’t into it. They are both romantics, and they’re looking for real connection — which is what the film is really about. As Callum Turner’s Owen says “It’s not really about the sex.”
Monica Barbaro as Allie in ONE NIGHT ONLY, directed by Will Gluck. Photo Credit: Nicole Rivelli/Universal Pictures. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Either through addition or by accentuation, the direction of One Night Only turns the other side of the coin. It is a film that is guaranteed to be widely misread as an endorsement of Purity Culture, wait-until-marriage puritanism by choice rather than by force. Our heroes spend the whole time trying to have sex while also railing about the culture of casual sex and the pressure to participate in it. The clunkiness of their discontent is a major weakness of the film. There’s a “have your cake and eat it, too” tradition in the genre that is honored here so far even as to cast Molly Ringwald of Pretty in Pink (1986) as Callum Turner’s mother. But make no mistake, even when it stumbles, and it does lightly stumble, the satire is aimed at modern dating’s disconnect, not the idea of unwedded connection.
L-R: Callum Turner as Owen and Maya Hawke as Malika in ONE NIGHT ONLY, directed by Will Gluck. Photo Credit: Universal Pictures. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Like Game Night (2018) recreates several party games in its plot without calling them out, the alienating experience of trying to date someone based on the visual image fed to you by a cell phone comes through in scene after hilarious scene. Barbaro and Turner are the funniest they’ve ever been, and the most beautiful. It’s movie star stuff and, like all good movie stars, their performances reach into some emotional truth separate from disappearing into a role. Their star personas bring an air of competency with them, and their casting makes the contrast with their characters’ dating struggles effective even when the script struggles.
“She’s getting piped so you might as well lay some.”
– LeVar Burton’s Rick
There’s something happening with sex and connection here in the real world. After three unbearable years of men who don’t talk to their wives writing about “the male loneliness epidemic,” a handful of filmmakers are weighing in on the real cause: three generations taught to fear risk. The cinematic king of sex, Gregg Arraki (The Doom Generation; Mysterious Skin), has a movie out titled I Want Your Sex, which is all about how he thinks Gen-Z needs to have more sex while they can. The film co-stars Cooper Hoffman (Saturday Night; The Long Walk) and Olivia Wilde (Tron: Legacy; Drinking Buddies), whose Gen-X-focused The Invite is still in theaters. Her film is also about how important it is to pursue authentic connection, in and out of bed. Another film released this year, The Drama (Zendaya and Robert Pattinson), is, in structure, a romantic comedy about whether you really know who you love focused on Millennials. All three films share deconstructionist framings of the romantic comedy, and strong critical reputations. And now, One Night Only, whose traditional structure risks dismissal as a date-night trifle.
L-R: Molly Ringwald as Linda and LeVar Burton as Rick in ONE NIGHT ONLY, directed by Will Gluck. Photo Credit: Nicole Rivelli. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
The rom-com genre has never been properly respected in American culture. The formulaic entries rarely experience the grace that critics and audiences often extend to action and horror films, awards bodies have traditionally ignored them as if they are as artistically empty, and their place in the popular canon remains segregated by misogyny. And that’s showing itself in the largely negative word of mouth about One Night Only in other publications. Is it any wonder that this trend holds strong when studios have spent the last decade relegating the genre to Hallmark and streaming low-budget efforts despite the fact that My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), What Women Want (2000), Hitch (2005), Pretty Woman (1990), There’s Something About Mary (1998), Crazy Rich Asians (2018), The Proposal (2009), and Runaway Bride (1999) all made more than $150 Million worldwide once upon a time. Show me the money! Not to mention the cultural legacy of When Harry Met Sally (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Annie Hall (1977), My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), Notting Hill (1999), How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), Moonstruck (1987), The Wedding Singer, (1998), the urtext Design for Living (1933), and Jerry Maguire (1996). It is incalculable how much these films have shaped the cinematic language and our understanding of it, particularly with respect to dialogue.
But Will Gluck has done both in hitting the box office — he directed a post-COVID rom-com (Anyone But You (2022)) to $220 million globally — and forming the legacy of the parents of Easy A (2010) in pop culture memory. And now he’s got something to say. Who brought what to the table remains to be dissected, but upon initial viewing, Travis Braun’s screenplay, with its rules and world-building, seems to be a rom-com for the post-Dobbs era where your internet history, your biometric data, your text messages, your condom usage, your sex-life, your dating life, your inter-state travel, are all a matter of federal record and you don’t have a choice. How quickly have men with power moved from subpoenaing period tracking apps to installing Flock cameras on private property?
As fast as we swipe left and right.
Either through addition or by accentuation, the direction of One Night Only turns the other side of the coin from the federal control of sex, to the private commodification of dating. This may sound trite and arrogant, but those who think this film has nothing to say that audiences seek to hear are as wrong as the men who blame male loneliness on MeToo.
At the height of the film, the tension in our packed critics/influencer screening was just as thick as at any recent blockbuster — baited breath en masse because romance matters, even if life is easier when we pretend it doesn’t, when it’s just the same on streaming as it is in a theater, or just as good on Tinder as it is on a nervously scrawled note.
L-R: Andrew Burnap as Max and Monica Barbaro as Allie in ONE NIGHT ONLY, directed by Will Gluck. Photo Credit: Universal Pictures. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Yes, economic instability affects loneliness. Yes, there are romantic repercussions to political movements. That’s what the high-concept is about. But if we’re looking for who is responsible for “male loneliness,” the sexless Generation Z, and “worryingly” low birthrates, look no further than Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs. Look no further than Dallas B. Tanner, CEO of Invitation Homes. Look no further than Spencer Rascoff, the CEO of Match Group, or Whitney Wolfe Herd, CEO of Bumble. We should all know their names equally.
The dating industry is an industry that has commodified a public good (love for God’s sake!) through habit-changing marketing, creating a problem that only they have the cure for. Pay more for a higher-tier of the dating app in order to be seen at all, yet telegraph to potential matches that you’re a loser desperate enough to pay. Feel bad? Buy a rose. Seemingly no one in your entire city wants you? Expand your range beyond reason. Still horny? Try Feeld. It’ll develop the same problems because the functions follow the form. And we can’t let go of that form because everyone else is holding our hands to it.
“Mandate me.”
In the most mind-breaking moment of the film, real-life MeToo denier Nicholas Braun (The Sheep Detectives; Succession) flirts with Monica Barbaro’s Allie in a montage of men she rejects at swiping-speed. He tells her that he works for the group that made the chip in her arm and delivers the yada-yada exposition of how it works chemically. He also tells her, now mostly ignoring him, that they are developing a pill that would allow people to have sex without getting caught. They just wouldn’t be able to feel pleasure because their brain would no longer release dopamine. This catches her attention and she asks if that would cure Parkinson’s. “Where’s the money in that?” he exclaims.
Abortion policing, Viagra’s medical patent abuse, Ozempic, the surveillance state, and The Apps, all in one quick joke. That’s a lot of intersectional thought being delivered with a light touch.
L-R: Monica Barbaro as Allie and Callum Turner as Owen in ONE NIGHT ONLY, directed by Will Gluck. Photo Credit: JoJo Whilden /Universal Pictures. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Why do we treat the themes of romantic comedies, their commentaries, their questions, as lesser than an awards play? Or an “elevated” horror film? Like the cultural labor of the women who are seen as their only audience, the ideas of rom-coms are dismissed as matters of course. But we do the same to all comedies because a thought must come across as “important” in order to be discoursed properly. It must be scary serious; it must make our hearts race. A powerful thought must never make us laugh, lest we lose credentials as people of taste.
L-R: Monica Barbaro as Allie and Callum Turner as Owen in ONE NIGHT ONLY, directed by Will Gluck. Photo Credit: Nicole Rivelli. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
The intersection of anti-abortion sentiment, willful economic dismantling, and digital dissociative exploitation have created a loneliness crisis where the past is always present and the future never arrives. Similarly, the studios’ dismissal of the box office potential of comedic cinema and female audiences has intersected to create a decade-long rom-com crisis where few good entries have been made, and even fewer have been widely seen. Critics and filmmakers often lament the death of mid-budget drama as the bullet that killed the movie star, but this rom-com vacuum is just as responsible for keeping audiences from meeting new movie stars and feeling new ideas.
The good news is, there’s a really good rom-com in theaters this weekend. Take a date and look out at these stars together. It’s romantic.
In theaters August 7th, 2026.
For more information, head to the official Universal Pictures One Night Only webpage.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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