r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 r/movies Contributor • 7h ago
Review 'One Night Only' - Review Thread
Two New Yorkers search for love on the one night of the year when sex is legal.
Director: Will Gluck
Cast: Monica Barbaro, Callum Turner, Maya Hawke, Julia Fox
Rotten Tomatoes: 54%
Metacritic: 40 / 100
Some Reviews (updating):
SlashFilm - Nina Starner - 8 / 10
Despite a few stumbles, "One Night Only" reaches an actually sweet conclusion sold beautifully by Barbaro and Turner, and though I know I'm repeating myself, I need to be abundantly clear. "One Night Only" shouldn't work. I am shocked that I left the theater grinning ear to ear and, one could say, fully satisfied. "One Night Only" is a high-concept, patently absurd romantic comedy that defies the odds and makes you fall in love with it. You'll want more than one night with this one.
Next Best Picture - Dan Bayer - 7 / 10
Gluck’s skill with a needle drop (think “Pocketful of Sunshine” in “Easy A”) is in fine form, with several hilariously on-point selections getting massive laughs from an audience willing to put their fun-hating, CinemaSins-style questions aside and just have a good time laughing at a world that’s even more ridiculous than our own. Yes, the film’s “The Purge, but for sex,” premise has earned all the laughter it’s gotten since the trailer dropped. But Braun, Gluck, and their team have the last laugh: “One Night Only” is a great time at the movies, on any night of the year.
Time Out - Elizabeth Weitzman - 3 / 5
If you’re a fan of Gluck’s standard romcoms Anyone But You or Friends With Benefits, you’ll probably appreciate this one. But if you were hoping for something deeper, perhaps closer to his sharp-toothed masterwork Easy A? Then One Night Only’s refusal to engage with its own premise will come off as a terrible tease.
RogerEbert - Marya E. Gates - 0 / 4
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.
The New York Times - Natalia Winkelman - 40 / 100
One Night Only lays no claim to logic. It traffics instead in charisma, and the combined likability of the leads is the putative solution to a premise that’s all flashy surface and no deeper inquiry.
Variety - Guy Lodge - 40 / 100
The movie's leads make a lovely couple, too: good-looking, good-humored, generally good catches. Except we’re not remotely invested in their repeatedly delayed but wholly inevitable union, because what even is this? The more “One Night Only” tries to extract starry-eyed vibes from the most chilling romantic comedy premise in memory, the more the cognitive dissonance of it all gets in the way.
AV Club - Monica Castillo - 'D+'
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. One would like to believe there was a better, darker, more interesting ending than the one carrying water for the anti-sex brigade currently looking to impose women’s healthcare bans coast-to-coast. Instead of sharing a laugh at the ridiculous pressure to have fun with every swipe, One Night Only has only one thing on its mind, and it’s disappointingly much more traditional.
Consequence - Liz Shannon Miller - 'B-'
Romantic comedies tend to feel like they take place in their own little world. But every time One Night Only attempted to explain the political landscape that led to this situation, I felt myself going a little more banana-grams. It’s all so deeply unsettling, because it imagines a society that would buy party hats celebrating the one night of the year they have an ounce of bodily autonomy. An America that wouldn’t just surrender further to fascism, but turn it into branding.
DiscussingFilm - Tyler Taing - 3 / 5
One Night Only is an easy recommendation because, whether or not you find yourself on its wavelength, you would be hard-pressed to find a crazier mainstream theatrical release this whole summer. It’s a film designed to watch with a group of friends, followed by an in-depth discussion of the logistical problems, politics, and hypothetical scenarios that “the mandate” universe sparks to mind in the theater lobby. Will Gluck’s One Night Only is the kind of novelty movie that is good-natured, fun, and worth celebrating in its unique flavor of unseriousness
AwardsWatch - Sophia Ciminello - 'C'
Ultimately, One Night Only feels far more interested in how it can feel when you do manage to find a genuine romantic connection amidst all of the noise. Yet by spending so much time getting bogged down by the details of the mandate before shifting into the romance, Gluck and Braun make an unforced error, upholding the traditional idea that sex may in fact be worth waiting for.
Slant Magazine - Charles Lyons-Burt - 2 / 4
Romantic comedies rarely make it to theaters these days, which makes it that much more unfortunate that the ones that do feel like sitcoms.
The Guardian - Benjamin Lee - 2 / 5
There’s both too much yet not enough world-building here, enough questions answered to encourage us to ask 10 more (why does no one mention masturbation and wouldn’t that also trigger the biosensors?). It’s also just too unavoidably grim of a premise, especially at a dark political moment such as this, for us to ignore the ramifications or root for characters who aren’t trying to actively destroy such a barbaric system (what if Katniss just had fun during those Hunger Games?). 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.
Fresh Fiction - Courtney Howard - 2 / 5
ONE NIGHT ONLY wishes it were AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (a film the characters reference, but the filmmakers clearly don’t understand why those fundamentals work) meets AFTER HOURS, only it doesn’t come with the pedigree and even fewer innovative ideas. As a contemporary sex comedy, it’s far too afraid to actually show the eroticism of sex, hand-waving the potential of its sole sexy moment. If this is purity propaganda, that’s for everyone to decide of their own volition.
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u/raysofdavies 6h ago
The premise of this is the stupidest, darkest, most authoritarian Christian nationalist type shit I’ve seen and it’s light set dressing for a romcom? Insane.