'One Night Only' review: Pre-marital sex is only legal for 12 hours in dumb romantic comedy

Courtesy of Universal Pictures

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Accurately pegged as the “Sex Purge” movie, Will Gluck’s new romantic comedy “One Night Only” imagines a world in which premarital sex is illegal except for one night each year, when everyone is free to bang their brains out without fear of legal repercussions. It’s a ludicrous premise, but also a potentially fascinating one, the kind of high-concept setup that could support a sharp satire about sex, repression and government control. Unfortunately, the logistical hurdles become so overwhelming that they eventually swallow the entire movie.

How would the government enforce such an invasive mandate? How would authorities know if you had sex outside the designated window, or whether you used a condom? Everyone is apparently required to havea biosensor capable of detecting the chemical changes that occur when someone is about to do the deed, which raises approximately 700 additional questions about privacy and bodily autonomy that the movie has little interest in answering.

These questions kept percolating in my head because “One Night Only” presents its universe with the bubbly disposition of a happy-go-lucky romantic comedy when, in reality, this society sounds absolutely horrifying. The movie wants the outrageous premise without confronting the implications of it. Frankly, I’d rather see the post-apocalyptic dystopian thriller happening somewhere just outside the frame.

On paper, this is grim totalitarianism run by a fascist state. We see talking heads in the background boasting about how “decency” has been restored and teen pregnancy rates have plummeted, except the movie establishes that its abstinence mandate applies to people 18 and older. So what exactly is stopping 16 and 17-year-olds from having sex? What happens to people who refuse to comply? What punishment does the government bestow upon citizens who defy state-mandated abstinence?

Perhaps it’s a moot point to split hairs over every intricacy of such an intentionally ridiculous premise, but “One Night Only” makes that nearly impossible because it never establishes enough internal logic to let you stop thinking about it. High-concept comedies don’t necessarily need realism, but they do need rules. Once you start poking holes in this world, the entire thing deflates remarkably quickly.

“One Night Only” unfolds in New York City on the fateful night when lewd debauchery takes over the streets and condoms are apparently in such short supply that the nearest drugstore is gouging customers for nearly $200. Which raises another question: wouldn’t everyone have stocked up months ago? If you only get one night a year to legally have sex, surely you’d plan ahead and buy more than ONE condom, right?

The primary plot follows Owen (Callum Turner) and Allie (Monica Barbaro), two attractive folks prowling New York for sex against a ticking 12-hour clock. Their paths briefly intertwine and, in a strange twist, they somehow don’t immediately jump each other’s bones. This is particularly baffling because the entire movie cannot stop reminding us how attractive Owen is, while simultaneously expecting us to believe that someone who looks like Monica Barbaro is having trouble finding one decent guy willing to sleep with her. I was already willing to stretch the thin veil of plausibility pretty far for this movie, but now you’re just insulting me.

Their increasingly convoluted non-sexual escapades take them through the Bronx and Manhattan, and credit should be given to Gluck, a solid commercial filmmaker with an instinct for making this version of New York feel bubbly, vibrant and alive. It has the glossy appeal of his previous romantic comedy, “Anyone But You,” and pairing Turner and Barbaro certainly satisfies the prerequisite of putting two extremely attractive people opposite each other.

What’s missing is the sharp writing necessary to make us believe there is any compelling reason Owen and Allie wouldn’t simply hop into bed together after their meet-cute. Yes, Owen has just vomited sushi into the street, which admittedly isn’t his strongest opening move, but this is the ONE night of the year when premarital sex is legal. Surely we can look past a little regurgitated spicy tuna.

Instead, “One Night Only” strings itself together through a parade of cameos and half-developed comic ideas. Molly Ringwald? Is that Pete Davidson? Wait, did I just see LeVar Burton? Rather than adding anything meaningful, the revolving door of recognizable faces only reinforces the feeling that the movie is made up of a collection of amusing pitches rather than a fully realized story. There isn’t much of a journey worth investing in because Owen and Allie never quite register as real people, largely because they’re trapped inside a universe that doesn’t make even a remote amount of sense.

More frustrating is the movie’s strangely muddled attitude toward sex itself. For something built entirely around sexual repression, “One Night Only” occasionally seems weirdly judgmental toward the people who simply want to have sex for fun. Travis Braun’s screenplay flirts with a sex-positive message about intimacy and human connection, yet it also spends considerable time ridiculing the horny masses surrounding its leads, as though Owen and Allie are somehow more enlightened because they aren’t participating in the debauchery. At one point, a character even exclaims, “Maybe the fascists are right!”

That could be a funny line in a sharper satire, but “One Night Only” never seems entirely sure what it is satirizing. Is the target government repression? Puritanical attitudes toward sex? Hookup culture? Romantic comedies themselves? There are potentially interesting ideas buried inside all of those avenues, but the movie keeps gesturing toward them without committing to any one of them.

Perhaps most surprisingly, for a movie that cannot stop talking about sex, there’s remarkably little sex actually happening in it. That might itself have been the joke, except the movie doesn’t do enough with the contradiction. Instead, every answer it provides seems to generate another 15 questions, and because Owen and Allie’s relationship never becomes compelling enough to distract from them, you’re left sitting there wondering about the mechanics of this bizarre authoritarian sex law when you should be rooting for these two people to fall for each other.

That’s ultimately the fatal flaw. A romantic comedy can survive a nonsensical premise if the romance works, and a satire can survive thin characters if its ideas are sharp enough. “One Night Only” doesn’t quite succeed at either. Its romance isn’t strong enough to make you forget about the world, and its world isn’t developed enough to make you appreciate the satire.

Credit to Gluck and company for throwing a haymaker with such an audacious premise. Unfortunately, when it comes time to deliver on it, “One Night Only” can’t rise to the occasion.

Grade: D+

ONE NIGHT ONLY is now playing in theaters.